Individual differences in involvement of the visual object recognition system during visual word recognition

An event-related potential study of the relationship between N170 lateralization and phonological awareness in developing readers

“…It is evident in the figure that N170s are maximal over the left and right lateral occipital sites (boxed). This is consistent both with the wider literature, which has demonstrated that N170 effects tend to be maximal over lateral occipital channels (see Rossion & Jacques, 2012), and with our own work with these items and this task in adults (Laszlo & Sacchi, 2015). For this reason, the remainder of the analyses, which focus on N170 effects, will be restricted to the right and left lateral occipital electrodes (a topographic analyses conducted over the 160-190 ms N170 window identified by the GCA, below, confirmed that N170 effects were in fact largest over the left and right lateral occipital electrodes).…”

“…It is clear that the N170 response to text does become more left-lateralized with reading experience (e.g., Maurer et al, 2011;Maurer et al, 2006;Laszlo & Sacchi, 2015;Brem et al, 2010). However, it is not clear whether this shift is directly related to improved phonological ability, per se, as would be predicted by the phonological mapping hypothesis, or is more diffusely related to improved reading ability.…”

“…As described, our experimental design will allow us not only to ask whether the N170 becomes more left-lateralized in response to print with increased phonological ability, but also whether this pattern, if observed, is 1) specifically driven by phonological ability and not other, related, skills and 2) specific to the processing of visual word forms, and not a more domain-general tuning of the higher visual system. (Laszlo & Sacchi, 2015) In prior work, we have examined the N170 response of adults to these same items in this same task (Laszlo & Sacchi, 2015). The principal result of that study was that less experienced readers tended to display less differentiation between words, wobjects, and objects on the N170.…”

The N170 ERP component differs in laterality, distribution, and association with continuous reading measures for deaf and hearing readers

“…Since the groups were matched on reading ability, this finding suggests that the optimal neural dynamics of visual word processing differs for skilled deaf and hearing readers. Specifically, for hearing readers, increased engagement of the right hemisphere was associated with poorer reading ability, consistent with previous studies (e.g., Shaywitz & Shaywitz, 2005; Laszlo & Sacchi, 2015). Recruitment of the right hemisphere has been argued to be maladaptive for hearing readers, possibly because right occipitotemporal regions may process words more as visual objects, which may result in less differentiated orthographic representations (Laszlo and Sacchi, 2015).…”

“…Laszlo and Sacchi (2015) reported that less experienced hearing adult readers (i.e., those with less print exposure) differentiated words less strongly from objects and ambiguous word/objects (e.g., the word “smile” shaped like a smile), particularly over the right hemisphere. However, if anything, the deaf readers in our study had slightly more reading experience than the hearing readers (the deaf participants scored better on the Author Recognition Test than the hearing participants).…”