Brain bases of morphological processing in young children

Abstract

How does the developing brain support the transition from spoken language to print? Two spoken language abilities form the initial base of child literacy across languages: knowledge of language sounds (phonology) and knowledge of the smallest units that carry meaning (morphology). While phonology has received much attention from the field, the brain mechanisms that support morphological competence for learning to read remain largely unknown. In the present study, young English-speaking children completed an auditory morphological awareness task behaviorally (n = 69, ages 6–12) and in fMRI (n = 16). The data revealed two findings: First, children with better morphological abilities showed greater activation in left temporo-parietal regions previously thought to be important for supporting phonological reading skills, suggesting that this region supports multiple language abilities for successful reading acquisition. Second, children showed activation in left frontal regions previously found active in young Chinese readers, suggesting morphological processes for reading acquisition might be similar across languages. These findings offer new insights for developing a comprehensive model of how spoken language abilities support children’s reading acquisition across languages.

Neural Correlates of Morphological Processing: Evidence from Chinese

“…Comparably, a recent study examined the neurological basis of morphological awareness in English-speaking children with auditory input, while attempting to avoid confounding reading proficiency with children's underlying morphological ability (Arredondo et al, 2015 ). To achieve this goal, a morphological awareness condition, a control word-matching condition and a rest-period baseline condition were included.…”

Brain bases of morphological processing in Chinese‐English bilingual children

“…Importantly, the results for the 11 English monolinguals that were drawn to match the bilinguals are consistent with the larger sample that was analyzed at a higher statistical threshold that was possible for a larger number of participants ( p < .001, ET = 35, corrected for multiple comparisons at p < .05 (False Discovery Rate [FDR]) published in Arredondo et al . ().…”

“…A total of 77 (36 girls, 41 boys; M age = 9.24 years; SD = 1.82; range = 6.05–13.01 years; average grade = 3rd grade) monolingual English children participated in the larger study (Hsu et al ., under review). A sample of 17 right‐handed monolingual children without a history of neurodevelopmental impairments completed an fMRI session (detailed results published in Arredondo, Ip, Shih Ju Hsu, Tardif and Kovelman ()). For the present investigation we selected data from 11 monolinguals who were age‐ and gender‐matched to the final bilingual sample (six females; M age = 9.67, SD = 1.50; range 7.58–12.51) so as to maximally match the bilingual group and to maintain the same statistical threshold across the two groups (Table ).…”

“…The English condition was the same as in Arredondo et al . () which was a derivational morphology task modeled after the Test of Morphological Structure task, which was previously shown to predict reading acquisition in English (Carlisle, ). During this condition, participants heard a real word (e.g.…”

“…The few prior developmental fMRI studies of morphological processing suggest that left IFG, MFG and MTG regions might be key to children's morphological processing in English (Arredondo et al ., ; Aylward, Richards, Berninger, Nagy, Field et al ., ) and in Chinese (Liu et al ., ). Thus, the study includes a closer examination of children's brain activity in these regions by analyzing regions of interest (ROIs).…”