Poster C5, Wednesday, August 21, 2019, 10:45 am – 12:30 pm, Restaurant Hall
Many ways to read your vowels: The development of a Hebrew reading brain
Upasana Nathaniel1, Yael Weiss2, Bechor Barouch1, Tami Katzir3, Tali Bitan1;1Psychology Department, IIPDM, University of Haifa, 2Psychology Department University of Texas at Austin, 3Department of Learning Disabilities and The Edmond J. Safra Brain Research Center for the Study of Learning Disabilities, University of Haifa
Brain plasticity implies that readers of different languages can have different reading networks. Theoretical models suggest that reading acquisition in transparent orthographies relies on mapping smaller orthographic units to phonology, than reading in opaque orthographies. Hebrew has a transparent version of orthography (pointed) used for beginners, and an opaque version used for skilled readers. Our previous study in adult readers showed that reading pointed words increased processing demands on regions associated with mapping orthography to phonology (Weiss, Katzir & Bitan, 2015). In the current study, we examined how children’s brain shift from greater reliance on reading pointed words in early stages, to reading un-pointed words later on, and the neurolinguistics processes that underlie this shift from reliance on decoding small orthographic units, to greater reliance on familiarity. 14 2nd graders and 9 5th graders read aloud Hebrew nouns during fMRI. Words were presented in a transparent or opaque script (pointed or un-pointed), differed in length (3 or 4 consonants) and in the presence of a vowel letter (with or without). ROI analysis revealed in both groups an interaction of pointing by length in the Visual Word Form Area. Only in the un-pointed condition, short words elicited greater activation than long words, with no difference in the pointed condition. Consistent with our behavioral results, these findings suggest that un-pointed short words face more competition from orthographically similar words, and that even young children rely on visual word patterns to read the opaque orthography. Similar effects were found in both groups when negative correlation with word frequency was used as a measure of processing difficulty. For the opaque orthography short words were more difficult than long words, whereas the opposite effect was found for the transparent orthography in bilateral inferior frontal gyri (IFG) and superior temporal gyri. This suggests that while pointed words are processed by piecemeal decoding of small units, recognition of un-pointed words relies on processing whole words, in terms of both phonological and lexical retrieval. However, orthographic transparency also had a differential effect on the groups. Only younger children showed an increase in processing load for un-pointed over pointed words in bilateral supramarginal and middle temporal gyri, associated with mapping orthography to phonology, and access to semantics, respectively. Furthermore, while older children showed transparency effects in left IFG pars opercularis, involved in phonological segmentation, younger children showed this effect in the right hemisphere. This is also consistent with our finding of a developmental increase in left lateralization in the superior temporal gyrus, associated with phonological processing. This is the first fMRI study to examine the developmental processes associated with reading acquisition in Hebrew. Some of the identified neural changes are universal, i.e. developmental increase in asymmetry for phonological processing, while other changes are unique to Hebrew, i.e. shared and differential effects of transparency in the two groups. Overall, these results elucidate the developmental changes associated with the shift from piecemeal decoding of small units, to greater reliance on word familiarity associated with more proficient reading.
Themes: Development, Reading
Method: Functional Imaging