Neurocognitive mechanisms of learning to read: print tuning in beginning readers related to word‐reading fluency and semantics but not phonology

Abstract

During reading acquisition children learn to recognize orthographic stimuli and link them to phonology and semantics. The present study investigated neurocognitive processes of learning to read after one year of schooling. We aimed to elucidate the cognitive processes underlying neural tuning for print that has been shown to play an important role for reading and dyslexia. A 128-channel EEG was recorded while 68 (Swiss-)German monolingual first grade children (mean age: 7.6) performed a one-back task with different types of letter and false-font strings. Print tuning was indexed by the N1 difference in the ERPs between German words and false-font strings, while the N1 lexicality effect was indexed by the difference between German words and pseudowords. In addition, we measured reading fluency, rapid automatized naming, phonological awareness, auditory memory span, and vocabulary. After one year of formal reading instruction N1 print tuning was clearly present at the group level, and could be detected at the individual level in almost 90% of the children. The N1 lexicality effect, however, could not be reliably found. On the cognitive level, next to word-reading fluency, vocabulary was also associated with N1 print tuning, but not measures reflecting phonological processing. These results demonstrate the presence of print tuning in the first year of reading acquisition and its development at the individual level. Moreover, individual differences in print tuning are not only related to word-reading fluency, but also to semantic knowledge, indicating that at early stages of learning to read the top-down modulation of print tuning is semantic rather than phonological in nature.

Lexical and sublexical orthographic processing: An ERP study with skilled and dyslexic adult readers

“…In addition, similarly to previous studies (e.g., Maurer et al, 2005Maurer et al, , 2011, pseudowords and symbolsequences evoked responses already in the earlier P1 component, reflecting that letter-specific processing in adults is under way as early as 80-120 ms. Taken together, the observed ERP activity is compatible with the idea that reading acquisition, and skilled processing of letters, drives the emergence of a perceptual mechanism specifically attuned to the properties of the orthographic code, signaled by the P1/N1 electrophysiological response Maurer et al, 2005Maurer et al, , 2006McCandliss et al, 2003). We note that in earlier ERP studies using false-font instead to better control for low-level visual differences with letters, print tuning effects were still robust (Eberhard-Moscicka et al, 2014), suggesting that the effects shown in studies using symbol strings are not due to low-level differences.…”

“…Recently, N1 difference in the ERPs between words and false-font strings was found by the end of the first grade, both at the group and individual response level (Eberhard-Moscicka, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2014.11.007 0093-934X/Ó 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Jost, Raith, & Maurer, 2014). Moreover, another result supporting the claim that the N1 reflects a specific brain training effect comes from studies with populations of different reading expertise: the N1 response is attenuated in groups lacking reading expertise such as dyslexic children (Araújo, Faísca, Bramão, Petersson, & Reis, 2012;Hasko, Groth, Bruder, Bartling, & Schulte-Körne, 2013; and adults Mahé, Bonnefond, Gavens, Dufour, & Doignon-Camus, 2012).…”

Left cortical specialization for visual letter strings predicts rudimentary knowledge of letter-sound association in preschoolers

“…These findings agree with the left posterior hemispheric dominance in processing letter strings, as found in adults with a variety of approaches (11,28,29) including the paradigm used here (24). However, it challenges the view that left-hemispheric specialization emerges relatively late in natural settings, that is, after at least 1 y of formal reading instruction (13,14). At the theoretical level, this finding indicates that minimal knowledge of grapheme-phoneme association is sufficient to induce neural changes, suggesting rapid plasticity in establishing connections between posterior visual and anterior phonological regions during development.…”

Underlying Skills of Oral and Silent Reading Fluency in Chinese: Perspective of Visual Rapid Processing

“…It has been found that Pinyin exhibited the similar mechanism of the orthographic-to-phonological mapping as in alphabetic writing systems (Wang et al, 2005). The orthographic-to-phonological mapping is a key element of reading fluency (Norton and Wolf, 2012; Eberhard-Moscicka et al, 2014; Hakvoort et al, 2015). The visual rapid temporal processing was hypothesized to be crucially involved in the mapping between spelling and sound as it requires the visual engagement and disengagement of each sub-lexical unit (Gori et al, 2014; Ruffino et al, 2014).…”

“…As the result, the automatization of the orthographic-to-phonological mapping would be achieved earlier in languages with shallow orthography (Wolf and Katzir-Cohen, 2001; Xue et al, 2013). The efficient orthographic-to-phonological mapping is critical for reading fluency (especially for oral reading fluency, Norton and Wolf, 2012; Eberhard-Moscicka et al, 2014; Hakvoort et al, 2015), and it has been suggested that the visual rapid temporal processing played a role in the mapping between spelling and sound which required the visually serial engagement and disengagement from each sub-lexical unit (Gori et al, 2014; Ruffino et al, 2014). Accordingly, due to its’ consistent grapheme-phoneme correspondence in shallow languages, the skilled readers may not show a close relationship between the (oral) reading fluency and visual rapid temporal processing in shallow orthographies.…”