Handedness, Sex, Familial Sinistrality Effects on Spatial Tasks

Snyder, Peter J.; Harris, Lauren Julius

doi:10.1016/s0010-9452(13)80216-x

Cited by 154 publications

(100 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…They were strongly right-handed as judged by the handedness inventory (42). Informed consent was obtained from each subject and their parents before testing.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A structural–functional basis for dyslexia in the cortex of Chinese readers

Siok

Niu

Zhou

et al. 2008

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

240

187

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Developmental dyslexia is a neurobiologically based disorder that affects Ϸ5-17% of school children and is characterized by a severe impairment in reading skill acquisition. For readers of alphabetic (e.g., English) languages, recent neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that dyslexia is associated with weak reading-related activity in left temporoparietal and occipitotemporal regions, and this activity difference may reflect reductions in gray matter volume in these areas. Here, we find different structural and functional abnormalities in dyslexic readers of Chinese, a nonalphabetic language. Compared with normally developing controls, children with impaired reading in logographic Chinese exhibited reduced gray matter volume in a left middle frontal gyrus region previously shown to be important for Chinese reading and writing. Using functional MRI to study language-related activation of cortical regions in dyslexics, we found reduced activation in this same left middle frontal gyrus region in Chinese dyslexics versus controls, and there was a significant correlation between gray matter volume and activation in the language task in this same area. By contrast, Chinese dyslexics did not show functional or structural (i.e., volumetric gray matter) differences from normal subjects in the more posterior brain systems that have been shown to be abnormal in alphabetic-language dyslexics. The results suggest that the structural and functional basis for dyslexia varies between alphabetic and nonalphabetic languages.brain function ͉ Chinese language ͉ culture ͉ reading disorder ͉ neuroimaging D evelopmental dyslexia is characterized by unexpectedly low reading ability in people who have adequate intelligence, typical schooling, and sufficient sociocultural opportunities (1-10). Early investigations of postmortem dyslexic brains revealed structural abnormalities in both cortical and subcortical areas (11,12). Recent neuroimaging studies examining structurefunction relationships with alphabetic languages have further identified several brain regions with atypical function and anomalous structure in dyslexia, including left temporoparietal areas, which are thought to be involved in letter-to-sound conversions in reading (1-8, 13-18), the left middle-superior temporal cortex, which is thought to be involved in speech sound analysis (17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22), and the left inferior temporo-occipital gyrus, which may function as a quick word form recognition system (18,20,(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27). Together, these findings support a prominent neurophysiological model of reading skill acquisition and its disorders according to which dyslexia is associated with atypical structural and functional development of posterior brain systems (1-10).The neural circuits involved in reading and reading disorders may vary across languages, because of differences in how a writing system links print to spoken language (4-7, 28-30). For example, in logographic Chinese, graphic forms (characters) are mapped to syllables, which differs markedly fr...

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“…They were strongly right-handed as judged by the handedness inventory (42). Informed consent was obtained from each subject and their parents before testing.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A structural–functional basis for dyslexia in the cortex of Chinese readers

Siok

Niu

Zhou

et al. 2008

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

240

187

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…They had not started to study English or other languages at the time this study was conducted. Subjects' handedness was judged by an inventory based on Snyder and Harris (30). The subjects' demographic characteristics are shown in Table 1, and all children participated in experiments 1 and 2.…”

Section: Subjects From Three Classrooms Of Beijing Yong Tai Primarymentioning

confidence: 99%

Reading depends on writing, in Chinese

Tan

Spinks

Eden

et al. 2005

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

374

345

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Language development entails four fundamental and interactive abilities: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Over the past four decades, a large body of evidence has indicated that reading acquisition is strongly associated with a child's listening skills, particularly the child's sensitivity to phonological structures of spoken language. Furthermore, it has been hypothesized that the close relationship between reading and listening is manifested universally across languages and that behavioral remediation using strategies addressing phonological awareness alleviates reading difficulties in dyslexics. The prevailing view of the central role of phonological awareness in reading development is largely based on studies using Western (alphabetic) languages, which are based on phonology. The Chinese language provides a unique medium for testing this notion, because logographic characters in Chinese are based on meaning rather than phonology. Here we show that the ability to read Chinese is strongly related to a child's writing skills and that the relationship between phonological awareness and Chinese reading is much weaker than that in reports regarding alphabetic languages. We propose that the role of logograph writing in reading development is mediated by two possibly interacting mechanisms. The first is orthographic awareness, which facilitates the development of coherent, effective links among visual symbols, phonology, and semantics; the second involves the establishment of motor programs that lead to the formation of long-term motor memories of Chinese characters. These findings yield a unique insight into how cognitive systems responsible for reading development and reading disability interact, and they challenge the prominent phonological awareness view.dyslexia ͉ phonological awareness ͉ reading development ͉ child language ͉ reading Chinese

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“…All were strongly right-handed as judged by the handedness inventory developed by Snyder and Harris (1993). None of them had any formal knowledge of Korean language.…”

Section: Subjectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Language experience shapes fusiform activation when processing a logographic artificial language: An fMRI training study

et al. 2006

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The significant role of the left midfusiform cortex in reading found in recent neuroimaging studies has led to the visual word form area (VWFA) hypothesis. This hypothesis suggests that years of experience reading native language change the visual expertise of this region to be especially sensitive to the visual form of native language. The present study aimed at testing this hypothesis by exploring the role of language experience in shaping the fusiform activation. We designed a logographic artificial language (LAL) using the visual form and pronunciation of Korean Hangul characters (but their correspondence was shuffled) and assigning arbitrary meanings to these characters. Twelve native Chinese Mandarin speakers (6 male and 6 female, 18 to 21 years old) with no prior knowledge of Korean language were trained in the visual form of these characters for 2 weeks, followed by 2 weeks each of phonological and semantic training. Behavioral data indicated that training was effective in increasing the efficiency of visual form processing and establishing the connections among visual form, sounds, and meanings. Imaging data indicated that at the pre-training stage, subjects showed stronger activation in the fusiform regions for LAL than for Chinese across both one-back visual matching task and the passive viewing task. Visual form training significantly decreased the activation of bilateral fusiform cortex and the left inferior occipital cortex, whereas phonological training increased activation in these regions, and the right fusiform remained more active after semantic training. Increased activations after phonological and semantic training were also evident in other regions involved in language processing. These findings thus do not seem to be consistent with the visual-expertise-induced-sensitivity hypothesis about fusiform regions. Instead, our results suggest that visual familiarity, phonological processing, and semantic processing all make significant but different contributions to shaping the fusiform activation. D

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Handedness, Sex, Familial Sinistrality Effects on Spatial Tasks

Cited by 154 publications

References 40 publications

A structural–functional basis for dyslexia in the cortex of Chinese readers

A structural–functional basis for dyslexia in the cortex of Chinese readers

Reading depends on writing, in Chinese

Language experience shapes fusiform activation when processing a logographic artificial language: An fMRI training study

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