The brain adapts to orthography with experience: evidence from English and Chinese

Cao, Fan; Brennan, Christine; Booth, James R.

doi:10.1111/desc.12245

Cited by 51 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 74 publications

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“…We also found that, at a slightly different location, English showed greater activation than Chinese in bilateral STG regardless of task. These regions have been found to be related to phonological representation and orthography-phonology-conversion [63] with stronger phonological activation in English L1 reading than Chinese L1 reading in the superior temporal gyrus [7]. Our results are consistent with this language difference in STG found in previous studies and add that it occurs for writing as well as reading.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

“…Chinese-English comparisons have been found in visuo-orthographic regions (more involved in Chinese reading) and phonological regions (more involved in English reading) [7]. For example, bilateral superior parietal lobules, middle occipital gyri and fusiform gyri show more activation in Chinese reading, whereas left inferior frontal gyrus, superior temporal gyrus and inferior parietal lobule are more involved in English reading [3].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Neural Signatures of the Reading-Writing Connection: Greater Involvement of Writing in Chinese Reading than English Reading

Cao

Perfetti

2016

PLoS ONE

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Research on cross-linguistic comparisons of the neural correlates of reading has consistently found that the left middle frontal gyrus (MFG) is more involved in Chinese than in English. However, there is a lack of consensus on the interpretation of the language difference. Because this region has been found to be involved in writing, we hypothesize that reading Chinese characters involves this writing region to a greater degree because Chinese speakers learn to read by repeatedly writing the characters. To test this hypothesis, we recruited English L1 learners of Chinese, who performed a reading task and a writing task in each language. The English L1 sample had learned some Chinese characters through character-writing and others through phonological learning, allowing a test of writing-on-reading effect. We found that the left MFG was more activated in Chinese than English regardless of task, and more activated in writing than in reading regardless of language. Furthermore, we found that this region was more activated for reading Chinese characters learned by character-writing than those learned by phonological learning. A major conclusion is that writing regions are also activated in reading, and that this reading-writing connection is modulated by the learning experience. We replicated the main findings in a group of native Chinese speakers, which excluded the possibility that the language differences observed in the English L1 participants were due to different language proficiency level.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural Signatures of the Reading-Writing Connection: Greater Involvement of Writing in Chinese Reading than English Reading

Cao

Perfetti

2016

PLoS ONE

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“…Given its importance, developmental cognitive neuroscience has investigated how different regions of the human cerebral cortex develop their specificity during reading acquisition (Turkeltaub, Gareau, Flowers, Zeffiro, & Eden, ; Turkeltaub, Eden, Jones, & Zeffiro, ). A traditional approach towards understanding the neural underpinnings of reading development has been to investigate the change in activation level of particular local brain regions (Cao et al, ; Cao, Brennan, & Booth, ; Price, ; Szaflarski et al, ; Turkeltaub et al, ). For example, a previous English study reported a developmental decrease in the activation of the dorsal part of the left superior temporal gyrus in a visually presented word rhyming judgment task (Bitan et al, ), indicating that there was reduced reliance on phonology in English reading development.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As for Chinese reading, a similar developmental trend has been found. For example, Cao et al (2009Cao et al ( , 2010Cao et al ( , 2015 reported that adults showed greater activation than children in the right middle occipital gyrus on reading tasks, suggesting that adults more effectively engage the brain region involved in visual-orthographic processing of Chinese characters, while children showed greater activation than adults in the left superior temporal gyrus in a rhyming task, suggesting children rely more on phonological representations of Chinese words (Cao et al, , 2010(Cao et al, , 2015.…”

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confidence: 99%

Differences between child and adult large‐scale functional brain networks for reading tasks

Liu

Gao

et al. 2017

Human Brain Mapping

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Reading is an important high-level cognitive function of the human brain, requiring interaction among multiple brain regions. Revealing differences between children's large-scale functional brain networks for reading tasks and those of adults helps us to understand how the functional network changes over reading development. Here we used functional magnetic resonance imaging data of 17 adults (19-28 years old) and 16 children (11-13 years old), and graph theoretical analyses to investigate age-related changes in large-scale functional networks during rhyming and meaning judgment tasks on pairs of visually presented Chinese characters. We found that: (1) adults had stronger inter-regional connectivity and nodal degree in occipital regions, while children had stronger inter-regional connectivity in temporal regions, suggesting that adults rely more on visual orthographic processing whereas children rely more on auditory phonological processing during reading. (2) Only adults showed between-task differences in inter-regional connectivity and nodal degree, whereas children showed no task differences, suggesting the topological organization of adults' reading network is more specialized. (3) Children showed greater inter-regional connectivity and nodal degree than adults in multiple subcortical regions; the hubs in children were more distributed in subcortical regions while the hubs in adults were more distributed in cortical regions. These findings suggest that reading development is manifested by a shift from reliance on subcortical to cortical regions. Taken together, our study suggests that Chinese reading development is supported by developmental changes in brain connectivity properties, and some of these changes may be domain-general while others may be specific to the reading domain.

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“…That is, Norwegian orthographic to phonological mappings are fairly consistent and can be used to correctly pronounce unfamiliar words while mappings in English are not as consistent. The difference in consistency may result in differences in reading network use throughout development (Cao, Brennan, & Booth, 2015; Levy et al, 2009; Seghier et al, 2008). …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Longitudinal changes in reading network connectivity related to skill improvement

2017

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Attempts to characterize the neural differences between individuals with and without dyslexia generally point to reduced activation in and connectivity between brain areas in a reading network composed of the inferior frontal gyrus, the ventral occipito-temporal cortex, and the dorsal temporo-parietal circuit. However, developmental work on brain activity during reading has indicated that some brain areas show developmental decreases in activation with age. Thus, reading network connectivity may also show decreases that are positively associated with increases in reading ability. However, the developmental trajectory of reading network connectivity in typically developing readers is not yet well established. In the current study, we use a longitudinal design to determine how connectivity changes over time, and how these changes relate to changes in reading skill. We find that longitudinal increases in reading ability are associated with higher initial connectivity in the dorsal stream between fusiform and inferior parietal cortex, implicated in phonological decoding, followed by decreases in connectivity in this stream over time. We further find that increases in reading ability are supported by maintenance of connectivity in the ventral stream between inferior occipital and fusiform cortex, suggesting a more mature automatic orthographic recognition strategy. Readers who show little reading improvement over time do not attain high levels of connectivity in the dorsal stream at any time point, and their ventral stream connectivity decreases over time. These results together suggest that superior reading ability is initially supported by phonological decoding, with a decreased reliance on this strategy as reading becomes more automated. Our results indicate that development of the dorsal and ventral streams are closely linked, and support the hypothesis that a decrease in the dorsal stream is important for ventral stream development.

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The brain adapts to orthography with experience: evidence from English and Chinese

Cited by 51 publications

References 74 publications

Neural Signatures of the Reading-Writing Connection: Greater Involvement of Writing in Chinese Reading than English Reading

Neural Signatures of the Reading-Writing Connection: Greater Involvement of Writing in Chinese Reading than English Reading

Differences between child and adult large‐scale functional brain networks for reading tasks

Longitudinal changes in reading network connectivity related to skill improvement

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