Search Abstracts | Symposia | Slide Sessions | Poster Sessions
From print to meaning: Mapping reading-experience effects on written-word representations in children
Poster Session D, Thursday, October 1, 4:30 - 6:30 pm, Wangari Maathai
Xiangqi Luo1, Cheyenne Svaldi1, Jo Taylor1; 1University College London
Reading is a fundamental skill that requires children to develop efficient access to meaning from print. Neuroimaging research has identified two pathways supporting reading: a dorsal pathway involved in more effortful print-to-sound (phonic) decoding and a ventral pathway supporting more efficient print-to-meaning (whole-word) mapping. However, it remains unclear how reading experience modulates the engagement of these pathways in children and refines the quality of written-word representations. The present study addressed this question by comparing neural responses to well-known and less well-known written words, providing insight into how developing readers achieve reading efficiency. Sixty children aged 9–10 years completed an event-related fMRI semantic decision task with 30 printed words: 15 well-known words and 15 less well-known words that differed in frequency and age of exposure in children’s printed materials. These word sets were all concrete nouns and were matched on length, syllable number, and spelling-sound consistency. Neural responses to well-known and less well-known words were compared using whole-brain analyses. Representational similarity analyses were conducted within the ventral pathway to examine two properties of written-word representations. First, representational stability was quantified as the consistency of neural activation patterns across repeated presentations of the same word. Second, representational flexibility was examined by testing how children encoded letter position within words, using both a position-specific letter model and a flexible letter-position model. Whole-brain analyses showed that well-known words elicited stronger activation in left ventral anterior-temporal regions, consistent with greater reliance on print-to-meaning mapping. In contrast, less well-known words recruited dorsal parietal-frontal regions, reflecting greater demands on phonic decoding. Preliminary RSA results suggest that the stability of children’s neural representations of written words varies with proficiency/experience and revealed the expected increase in the flexibility of letter-position coding from posterior to anterior ventral regions. This study examined the neural mechanisms through which reading experience drives children’s transition from phonic decoding to whole-word reading. By examining representational stability and flexibility, it identifies new neural markers of efficient reading development in middle childhood.
Topic Areas: Language Development/Acquisition, Reading