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Poster D70, Wednesday, August 21, 2019, 5:15 – 7:00 pm, Restaurant Hall

Shared Cortical Activation for Children’s Phonological Awareness in Signed and Spoken Language: A Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy Study

Diana Andriola1, Clifton Langdon1;1Gallaudet University

Introduction. Phonological awareness (PA) is the ability to identify and manipulate the phonological structure of words, and decades of research indicate that PA is highly correlated with reading outcomes in children. This correlation is interpreted as arising from the mapping of phonological segments to orthographic representations; thus, PA skill in a signed language without its own orthographic system does not support learning to read in a distinct spoken language (e.g., American Sign Language PA is not predictive of English reading outcomes). Results from recent behavioral studies challenge this view, finding that PA skill in a signed language is correlated with reading ability (Corina et al., 2014; McQuarrie & Abbott, 2013; Holmer et al., 2016). This raises the question: Does a common set of neural mechanisms underlie this behavioral correlation across signed and spoken languages? Here we use functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to examine cortical activation during PA tasks in deaf children. We test the hypothesis that signed and spoken language PA are supported by a common mechanism. If this is true, we predict 1) correlations between reading and American Sign Language (ASL) PA task performance will be similar to correlations between reading and English PA task performance, and 2) similar patterns of cortical activation during ASL PA and English PA tasks in regions associated with phonological awareness processing (e.g., left inferior frontal gyrus) (Burton, 2001; Katzir, Misra, & Poldrack, 2005; MacSweeney et al., 2008). Methods. Deaf children who are fluent in ASL and enrolled in K-6th grades (n = 17; mean age = 9.14, SD = 2.0) participated in this study. Participants were administered a battery of reading comprehension, language, and cognitive assessments. During fNIRS scanning, children completed two novel picture-based PA decision tasks designed to elicit PA processing for ASL and English. The tasks required the children to make phonological similarity judgments about the signs or words corresponding to pairs of pictures (i.e., Do the ASL signs for the the pictures have a similar location? Do the English words for the pictures rhyme?). Results. Reading comprehension has similar strong positive correlations with ASL PA and English PA. We also found positive correlations between ASL proficiency and English PA and between ASL proficiency and reading comprehension. A conjunction analysis of fNIRS data reveals shared activation for ASL PA and English PA in left frontal regions. Conclusion. This study is the first to investigate the relationship between PA and reading development at the brain and behavioral levels, and finds that both signed and spoken language PA are supported by a shared neural mechanism. These findings indicate that early sign language experience supports the development of PA for both signed and spoken language as well as early reading skills in deaf children. Thus, it is necessary to revisit classic views of the necessity of sound-to-print mapping mechanisms for reading success. Instead, it may be necessary to consider a broader level connection between PA skills and reading outcomes.

Themes: Reading, Development
Method: Functional Imaging

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