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Longitudinal development of speech and print processing in the Visual Word Form Area
Poster Session F, Friday, October 2, 2:45 - 4:45 pm, Wangari Maathai
Anna Szukało1, Weronika Herdzina2, Agnieszka Dębska Phd, DSc3; 1Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology
Learning to read changes how the brain processes visual and spoken language. One important neural marker of reading acquisition is the Visual Word Form Area (VWFA) in the left ventral occipitotemporal cortex (lvOT), specialized for processing written words (Cohen et al., 2000). However in adults, the VWFA may also respond to spoken language (Pattamadilok et al., 2019), and neural populations for spoken and written language processing may coexist (Wang et al., 2025). Developmental studies show that the connection between written and spoken language in the lvOT becomes stronger as children learn to read (Dębska et al., 2024). These findings suggest that speech-related neural responses may contribute to VWFA development, but the developmental direction of this relationship remains unclear. We test two developmental accounts. The Speech-to-Print account predicts that already prereaders will show speech-sensitive neural populations in lvOT, and that voxels will become involved in written word processing after reading acquisition. The Print-to-Speech account predicts that speech-related responses in lvOT will appear only after children learn to read as orthographic co-activations. At the end of the project we will test whether children with dyslexia show different developmental trajectories. The ongoing research is conducted in the Laboratory of Language Neurobiology at the Nencki Institute in Warsaw, Poland. The project follows 120 Polish-speaking children. First we are recruiting prereaders with (N=60) and without (N=60) risk of dyslexia.. Children undergo behavioral and fMRI sessions at three timepoints (5–6/7–8/9–10 y.o.), including assessments of phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, vocabulary, working memory, and reading skills. At the last time point (3rd grade) participants will complete a dyslexia diagnostic assessment. The present project uses an fMRI repetition suppression (RS) paradigm. Stimuli are presented for 600 ms in a block design across speech and visual print modalities . In two adaptation conditions, lexical item is repeated six times within a block, with low-level perceptual features varying across repetitions (different fonts or recordings). In two control conditions, six different lexical items were presented within a block, either visually or auditorily. The task is presented in two runs, each run consisting of 132 stimuli per condition. We expect to observe changes in voxel adaptation in lvOT across reading development, allowing us to test when speech-related neural responses emerge with print specialization. Children who develop typical reading skills are expected to show stronger adaptation and increasing specialization over time. In contrast, children at familial risk of dyslexia in TP1 and TP2, and children with diagnosis of dyslexia in TP3 may show weaker adaptation effects and modality specific patterns to print and speech in lvOT. These findings will help explain how the VWFA develops and may identify early neural markers of reading difficulties. The preliminary results will be presented in the poster. This ongoing research is funded by the National Science Centre under grant no. 2024/54/E/HS6/00242 for the period 2025–2030.
Topic Areas: Language Development/Acquisition, Reading