Reading faces: Investigating the use of a novel face-based orthography in acquired alexia

Abstract

Skilled visual word recognition is thought to rely upon a particular region within the left fusiform gyrus, the visual word form area (VWFA). We investigated whether an individual (AA1) with pure alexia resulting from acquired damage to the VWFA territory could learn an alphabetic “FaceFont” orthography, in which faces rather than typical letter-like units are used to represent phonemes. FaceFont was designed to distinguish between perceptual versus phonological influences on the VWFA. AA1 was unable to learn more than five face-phoneme mappings, performing well below that of controls. AA1 succeeded, however, in learning and using a proto-syllabary comprising 15 face-syllable mappings. These results suggest that the VWFA provides a “linguistic bridge” into left hemisphere speech and language regions, irrespective of the perceptual characteristics of a written language. They also suggest that some individuals may be able to acquire a non-alphabetic writing system more readily than an alphabetic writing system.

Fusiform Gyrus Laterality in Writing Systems with Different Mapping Principles: An Artificial Orthography Training Study

“…Improved decoding due to biphone-bigraph learning, in which the focus is on the syllable level of representation (e.g., ‘pa+at=pat’ is more effective than ‘p+a+t=pat’), has also been observed in alexic and dyslexic individuals (Bowes & Martin, 2007; Friedman & Lott, 2002). Further support comes from a patient with pure alexia and left mFG damage, who had impaired phoneme-grapheme mapping, but relatively preserved syllable-grapheme mapping using artificial orthographies (Moore, Brendel, et al, 2014). An interesting possibility to explore in future research rests upon the logic that using a syllable-based orthography may encourage the use of decoding strategies that rely to a lesser extent on left hemisphere reading areas.…”

“…Moore and colleagues, in a second study that used faces as orthographic stimuli, also investigated the impact of mapping principle (Moore, Brendel, & Fiez, 2014). They did so by directly varying the mapping principle of two different artificial proto-orthographies.…”

Learning to Read an Alphabet of Human Faces Produces Left-lateralized Training Effects in the Fusiform Gyrus

“…Additional evidence that the left FG is essential for the acquisition and use of FaceFont comes from a converging study involving an individual (AA1) with acquired alexia resulting from damage to the left FG (Moore, Brendel, & Fiez, in press). Across multiple attempts, AA1 failed to learn more than five face–phoneme mappings.…”

Using artificial orthographies for studying cross-linguistic differences in the cognitive and neural profiles of reading

“…Artificial orthographies also enable controlling for exposure and experience of each participant that is never truly controlled for in studies using naturally occurring writing systems, but could potentially affect item-specific individual differences (Share, 1995). We have identified 13 published studies, in addition to ongoing work in our lab (Hirshorn et al, 2012; Hirshorn et al, 2013; Moore, Durisko, Chen, et al, 2013), that have used artificial orthographies (Bitan & Booth, 2012; Bitan & Karni, 2003, 2004; Bitan, Manor, Morocz, & Karni, 2005; Gleitman & Rozin, 1973; Hart & Perfetti, 2008; Maurer, Blau, Yoncheva, & McCandliss, 2010; Mei et al, 2012; Moore, Brendel, & Fiez, 2014; Moore, Durisko, Perfetti, & Fiez, 2013; Sebesta, 1964; Taylor, Plunkett, & Nation, 2011; Yoncheva, Blau, Maurer, & McCandliss, 2010). They cover topics such as the acquisition of visual expertise (Maurer et al, 2010) or visual/perceptual role in neural processing of reading (Moore, Durisko, Chen, et al, 2013; Moore, Durisko, Perfetti, et al, 2013), effect of letter instruction on word identification (Bitan & Booth, 2012; Bitan & Karni, 2003, 2004; Bitan et al, 2005), phonological interference in lexical representations (Hart & Perfetti, 2008), orthographic consistency (Sebesta, 1964; Taylor et al, 2011), and differences in learning and the neural representations of reading as a factor of grain size (Gleitman & Rozin, 1973; Hirshorn et al, 2013; Mei et al, 2012; Moore et al, 2014; Yoncheva et al, 2010).…”