title: Brain sensitivity to print emerges when children learn letter-speech sound correspondences.
abstract: The acquisition of reading skills is a major landmark process in a human's cognitive development. On the neural level, a new functional network develops during this time, as children typically learn to associate the well-known sounds of their spoken language with unfamiliar characters in alphabetic languages and finally access the meaning of written words, allowing for later reading. A critical component of the mature reading network located in the left occipito-temporal cortex, termed the "visual word-form system" (VWFS), exhibits print-sensitive activation in readers. When and how the sensitivity of the VWFS to print comes about remains an open question. In this study, we demonstrate the initiation of occipito-temporal cortex sensitivity to print using functional MRI (fMRI) (n = 16) and event-related potentials (ERP) (n = 32) in a controlled, longitudinal training study. Print sensitivity of fast (<250 ms) processes in posterior occipito-temporal brain regions accompanied basic associative learning of letter-speech sound correspondences in young (mean age 6.4 +/- 0.08 y) nonreading kindergarten children, as shown by concordant ERP and fMRI results. The occipito-temporal print sensitivity thus is established during the earliest phase of reading acquisition in childhood, suggesting that a crucial part of the later reading network first adopts a role in mapping print and sound.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Jyväskylä, Agora Center, 40014 Jyväskylä, Finland. sbrem@kjpd.uzh.ch
authors.forename: Silvia
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Brem
authors.forename: Silvia
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Bach
authors.forename: Karin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Kucian
authors.forename: Tomi K
authors.initials: TK
authors.lastname: Guttorm
authors.forename: Ernst
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Martin
authors.forename: Heikki
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Lyytinen
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Brandeis
authors.forename: Ulla
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Richardson
mesh_terms: D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001931:Brain Mapping; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005071:Evoked Potentials; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D009778:Occipital Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D011932:Reading; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*
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