Iliana Reyes

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• Reyes, I., & Esteban-Guitart, M. (2013). Exploring Multiple Literacies from Homes and Communities: A Cross-cultural Comparative Analysis. International Handbook of Research on Children's Literacy, Learning, and Culture, 155-171.
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  Abstract: More recently, a wave of research that addresses the multiple pathways to literacy that children follow is the syncretic literacy studies. This chapter reviews particular examples from studies undertaken with some theoretical approaches. The studies reviewed in this chapter move far beyond a limited view of literacy as isolated features of decoding and encoding sound to text to show the intricate ways that literacy can unfold when fostered and used for authentic communicative purposes. Various contexts of children's life such as religious, school, home, and after school settings are spaces for learning and developing literacy. The vast majority of research projects have focused on schools as the site where literacy takes place, on monolingual communities, and on literate societies that privilege written as opposed to oral language. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd..
• Reyes, I., Kenner, C., Moll, L. C., & Orellana, M. F. (2012). Biliteracy among children and youths. Reading Research Quarterly, 47(3), 307-327.
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  Abstract: The dual purposes of this review are, first, to synthesize the extant research on biliteracy, focusing particularly on children and youths and, second, to clarify key terms and phenomena in this developing field. The review is organized into three areas of research: (1) individual biliteracy development, (2) biliteracy in family and community contexts, and (3) biliteracy in the classroom context. Contributions from these various areas offer multiple possibilities for describing children's development and maintenance of biliteracy while taking into consideration the interdisciplinary and multifaceted nature of research in this area. © 2012 International 328 Reading Association.
• Azuara, P., & Reyes, I. (2011). Negotiating worlds: A young Mayan child developing literacy at home and at school in Mexico. Compare, 41(2), 181-194.
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  Abstract: In Mexico almost 10 million people speak an indigenous language. Recognizing the pluralistic nature of the nation, the Mexican Constitution mandates bilingual-intercultural education; in reality, however, the school system typically imposes the Spanish language and dominant culture on indigenous children. For these children their academic success comes at the expense of their own language and culture. In this article we share the case study of Yadira, a Mayan girl living in Yucatan, Mexico, whom we met when she was in first grade. Using ethnographic tools we document the different literacy events in which Yadira participates at home and at school, and how these shape her understandings about print. We discuss how Yadira negotiates between two worlds using informal sources of Maya and Spanish to construct meaning from written language. © 2011 British Association for International and Comparative Education.
• Reyes, I., & Azuara, P. (2008). Emergent biliteracy in young Mexican immigrant children. Reading Research Quarterly, 43(4), 374-398.
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  Abstract: This article explores the relationship between emergent biliteracy and growing up in a biliterate environment. The study focuses on two questions: (1) What knowledge of biliteracy do young bilingual preschool children develop in the early years? (2) How do context and specific language environments influence the development of biliteracy in young Mexican Spanish-English bilingual children? The authors report data from a multiple-method research project with 12 4- and 5-year-old Mexican immigrant children living in the U.S. Southwest. Results indicated that the children were developing knowledge and metalinguistic awareness about print in both their languages; the families demonstrated a wide variety of communicative practices and ways in which they used written materials in the two languages; and intergenerational learning occurred in both directions among family members. The authors propose a model of emergent biliteracy that integrates the different cultural contexts that foster or hinder biliteracy development in the young bilingual child. The research contributes to the development of an ecological model of emergent biliteracy that recognizes the dynamic and complex interactions among home, school, and neighborhood contexts. This model serves as a heuristic device that allows researchers and teachers to consider how different linguistic and cultural spaces affect children's biliteracy development in the environments where they are growing up bilingual. © 2008 International Reading Association.
• Reyes, I., & Moll, L. C. (2008). Linguistically and Culturally Responsive Education: Bilingual and Biliterate Practices at Home and School. The Handbook of Educational Linguistics, 147-160.
• Reyes, I., & Hernández, A. E. (2006). Sentence interpretation strategies in emergent bilingual children and adults. Bilingualism, 9(1), 51-69.
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  Abstract: This study examined sentence processing in emergent bilingual children and young adults in both English (second language - L2) and Spanish (first language - L1). One hundred participants from five different age groups (5;4-7;11, 8;0-10;11, 11;2-13;11, 14;0-16;8 years, and college-age adults) participated in this study. An online sentence interpretation paradigm was used to explore participants' processing patterns. Results of both choice and reaction time experiments provide new information about consolidation and "in between" strategies for Spanish-English bilinguals; on the use of the distribution of local vs. topological cues (namely early reliance on word order in both languages, followed by an integration of late-emerging subject-verb agreement cues from 11 to 13 years of age). The nature of these syntactic strategies and their implications for developmental theories of bilingualism are discussed. © Cambridge University Press 2006.
• Wicha, N. Y., Orozco-Figueroa, A., Reyes, I., Hernandez, A., Gavaldón, L., & Bates, E. A. (2005). When zebras become painted donkeys: Grammatical gender and semantic priming interact during picture integration in a spoken Spanish sentence. Language and Cognitive Processes, 20(4), 553-587.
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  Abstract: This study investigates the contribution of grammatical gender to integrating depicted nouns into sentences during on-line comprehension, and whether semantic congruity and gender agreement interact using two tasks: naming and semantic judgement of pictures. Native Spanish speakers comprehended spoken Spanish sentences with an embedded line drawing, which replaced a noun that either made sense or not with the preceding sentence context and either matched or mismatched the gender of the preceding article. In Experiment 1a (picture naming) slower naming times were found for gender mismatching pictures than matches, as well as for semantically incongruous pictures than congruous ones. In addition, the effects of gender agreement and semantic congruity interacted; specifically, pictures that were both semantically incongruous and gender mismatching were named slowest, but not as slow as if adding independent delays from both violations. Compared with a neutral baseline, with pictures embedded in simple command sentences like "Now please say", both facilitative and inhibitory effects were observed. Experiment 1b replicated these results with low-cloze gender-neutral sentences, more similar in structure and processing demands to the experimental sentences. In Experiment 2, participants judged a picture's semantic fit within a sentence by button-press; gender agreement and semantic congruity again interacted, with gender agreement having an effect on congruous but not incongruous pictures. Two distinct effects of gender are hypothesised: a "global" predictive effect (observed with and without overt noun production), and a "local" inhibitory effect (observed only with production of gender-discordant nouns). © 2005 Psychology Press Ltd.
• Reyes, I. (2003). A study of sentence interpretation in Spanish monolingual children. First Language, 23(3), 285-309.
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  Abstract: The present study investigated grammatical strategies developed by Spanish monolingual speakers. Children and young adults were presented with a sentence interpretation task in which they listened to a sentence comprised of two nouns and a verb, and had to decide which of these two referents was responsible for doing the action in the sentence. This task was used to examine syntactic and morphological cues that children use to determine agent roles during sentence processing. In line with previous developmental studies, the results indicate an early reliance on canonical word order and a crossover in syntactic preference from word order to subject-verb agreement cues. This early preference of word order over subject-verb agreement cues is different from results observed in adult Spanish speakers. This difference and the developmental patterns are considered within the framework of crosslinguistic work in previous sentence interpretation studies. Copyright © 2003 SAGE Publications.
• Hernandez, A. E., & Reyes, I. (2002). Within- and Between-Language Priming Differ: Evidence from Repetition of Pictures in Spanish-English Bilinguals. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory and Cognition, 28(4), 726-734.
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  PMID: 12109764;Abstract: In the current study, the authors used an immediate repetition paradigm with pictures to observe whether repetition enhances word production in bilinguals. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to name pictures that were named previously in the same language (Spanish-Spanish or English-English) or in the opposite language (Spanish-English or English-Spanish). Results revealed a repetition effect both within languages and between languages. Furthermore, there was an asymmetry within language, with repetition priming being larger in Spanish than in English. Experiments 2 and 3 revealed that lag interacted with language for both within- and between-language priming. However, lag resulted in a decrease in the asymmetry for within- but not between-language priming. The results are consistent with the view that within- and between-language repetition priming are mediated by different mechanisms.