The neural basis for primary and acquired language skills

Abstract

Reading is a cultural invention that needs to recruit cortical infrastructure that was not designed for it (cultural recycling of cortical maps). In the case of reading both visual cortex and networks for speech processing are recruited. Here I discuss current views on the neurobiological underpinnings of spoken language that deviate in a number of ways from the classical Wernicke-LichtheimGeschwind model. More areas than Broca's and Wernicke's region are involved in language. Moreover, a division along the axis of language production and language comprehension does not seem to be warranted. Instead, for central aspects of language processing neural infrastructure is shared between production and comprehension. Arguments are presented in favor of a dynamic network view, in which the functionality of a region is co-determined by the network of regions in which it is embedded at particular moments in time. Finally, core regions of language processing need to interact with other networks (e.g. the attentional networks and the ToM network) to establish full functionality of language and communication. The consequences of this architecture for reading are discussed.

Impact of word‐to‐text integration processes on reading comprehension development in English as a second language

“…Anomaly detection is the process in which readers need to detect discontinuities in text. In order to comprehend language, readers constantly update their mental representations of a text, integrating semantics of separate words into the sentence context (Hagoort, 2017; Kutas & Hillyard, 1980). Anomalous sentences have been shown to elicit larger N400 effects in adult L1 learners (van Berkum et al, 1999), indicating integration difficulty, than passages without anomalies.…”

Universals in Learning to Read Across Languages and Writing Systems

“…This convergence of speech and reading areas in the brain across unrelated languages reflects the broad universal principles that writing encodes language and that reading engages phonology. Both visual cortex and temporal/parietal networks for lexical and unification processing are recruited (see Dehaene & Cohen, 2011;Hagoort, 2017). Thanks to the (re)structuring (OP1) and increasing awareness (OP2) of the phonological infrastructure of spoken language, and as a result of a learned specialization to recognize (OP3) and extend orthographic codes (OP4), visual word forms are stored in memory which increase in number, specificity (OP5) and redundancy (OP6) through reading exposure.…”