Repetition Probability Effects for Words Depend on Language Knowledge

Mapping Intimacies ◽

10.1101/2021.11.01.466762 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Chenglin Li ◽

Gyula Kovacs

Keyword(s):

Word Processing ◽

Mother Tongue ◽

Visual Word ◽

Neural Mechanisms ◽

Chinese Characters ◽

Visual Word Form Area ◽

Repetition Suppression ◽

Language Knowledge ◽

Prior Experiences ◽

Predictive Processes

The magnitude of repetition suppression (RS), measured by fMRI, is modulated by the probability of repetitions (P(rep)) for various sensory stimulus categories. It has been suggested that for visually presented simple letters this P(rep) effect depends on the prior practices of the participants with the stimuli. Here we tested further if previous experiences affect the neural mechanisms of RS, leading to the modulatory effects of stimulus P(rep), for more complex lexical stimuli as well. We measured the BOLD signal in the Visual Word Form Area (VWFA) of native Chinese and German participants and estimated the P(rep) effects for Chinese characters and German words. The results showed a significant P(rep) effect for stimuli of the mother tongue in both participant groups. Interestingly, Chinese participants, learning German as a second language, also showed a significant P(rep) modulation of RS for German words while the German participants who had no prior experiences with the Chinese characters showed no such effects. Our findings suggest that P(rep) effects on RS are manifest for visual word processing as well, but only for words of a language with which the participants have prior experiences. These results support further the idea that predictive processes, estimated by P(rep) modulations of RS, require prior experiences.

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Functionally Separable Font-invariant and Font-sensitive Neural Populations in Occipitotemporal Cortex

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience ◽

10.1162/jocn_a_01408 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 31 (7) ◽

pp. 1018-1029 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Zhiheng Zhou ◽

Tutis Vilis ◽

Lars Strother

Keyword(s):

Visual Word ◽

Neural Mechanisms ◽

Word Form ◽

Invariant Representation ◽

Visual Word Form Area ◽

Repetition Suppression ◽

Neural Populations ◽

Occipitotemporal Cortex ◽

Middle Occipital Gyrus ◽

Repeated Words

Reading relies on the rapid visual recognition of words viewed in a wide variety of fonts. We used fMRI to identify neural populations showing reduced fMRI responses to repeated words displayed in different fonts (“font-invariant” repetition suppression). We also identified neural populations showing greater fMRI responses to words repeated in a changing font as compared with words repeated in the same font (“font-sensitive” release from repetition suppression). We observed font-invariant repetition suppression in two anatomically distinct regions of the left occipitotemporal cortex (OT), a “visual word form area” in mid-fusiform cortex, and a more posterior region in the middle occipital gyrus. In contrast, bilateral shape-selective lateral occipital cortex and posterior fusiform showed considerable sensitivity to font changes during the viewing of repeated words. Although the visual word form area and the left middle occipital gyrus showed some evidence of font sensitivity, both regions showed a relatively greater degree of font invariance than font sensitivity. Our results show that the neural mechanisms in the left OT involved in font-invariant word recognition are anatomically distinct from those sensitive to font-related shape changes. We conclude that font-invariant representation of visual word form is instantiated at multiple levels by anatomically distinct neural mechanisms within the left OT.

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Visual word form processing deficits driven by severity of reading impairments in children with developmental dyslexia

Scientific Reports ◽

10.1038/s41598-020-75111-8 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 10 (1) ◽

Author(s):

S. Brem ◽

U. Maurer ◽

M. Kronbichler ◽

M. Schurz ◽

F. Richlan ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Reading Fluency ◽

Word Processing ◽

Visual Word ◽

Common Finding ◽

Word Form ◽

Reduced Word ◽

Form Processing ◽

Visual Word Form Area ◽

Intermediate Readers ◽

Spatially Extended

Abstract The visual word form area (VWFA) in the left ventral occipito-temporal (vOT) cortex is key to fluent reading in children and adults. Diminished VWFA activation during print processing tasks is a common finding in subjects with severe reading problems. Here, we report fMRI data from a multicentre study with 140 children in primary school (7.9–12.2 years; 55 children with dyslexia, 73 typical readers, 12 intermediate readers). All performed a semantic task on visually presented words and a matched control task on symbol strings. With this large group of children, including the entire spectrum from severely impaired to highly fluent readers, we aimed to clarify the association of reading fluency and left vOT activation during visual word processing. The results of this study confirm reduced word-sensitive activation within the left vOT in children with dyslexia. Interestingly, the association of reading skills and left vOT activation was especially strong and spatially extended in children with dyslexia. Thus, deficits in basic visual word form processing increase with the severity of reading disability but seem only weakly associated with fluency within the typical reading range suggesting a linear dependence of reading scores with VFWA activation only in the poorest readers.

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Testing Models of the Visual Word Form Area Using Combined ERP and fMRI Using the Special Properties of Chinese Characters

10.1101/841817 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Dan Xiang ◽

Joseph Dien ◽

Donald J. Bolger

Keyword(s):

Event Related Potentials ◽

Visual Word ◽

Source Analysis ◽

Chinese Characters ◽

Word Form ◽

Partially Order ◽

Chinese Speakers ◽

Visual Word Form Area ◽

Related Potentials ◽

Native Chinese Speakers

AbstractThe visual word form area or VWFA has been of special interest for studies of reading and dyslexia and yet there are conflicting models regarding its function. Here we put the Local Combination Detector, Lexicon, and Interactive accounts to the test, using a combination of event-related potentials and functional magnetic resonance imaging. We do so using both pseudoword and reversed radical false word manipulations with Chinese characters, making use of its special properties. We recorded event-related potentials with 68 channels while twenty native Chinese speakers were making rhyme and meaning judgments on single Chinese characters and BOLD signals were collected in a 3T magnet using multi-plane EPI with a further fifteen native Chinese speakers. The word N170 showed a prolongation for reversed radical false characters while the VWFA also showed an effect of reversal, albeit only for pseudocharacters. Furthermore, an N450 rhyming effect was observed in the phonological task compared to the semantic task, but only via an interaction with reversal. The source analysis of the N450 co-registered with a Supplementary Motor Area activation. The combination of these observations suggests that the ventral orthographic pathway is partially order insensitive and that full phonological encoding occurs relatively late, supporting and expanding a model of dyslexia. Overall, they best support a version of the Lexicon account of the VWFA.

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Taxi vs. Taksi: On Orthographic Word Recognition in the Left Ventral Occipitotemporal Cortex

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience ◽

10.1162/jocn.2007.19.10.1584 ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 19 (10) ◽

pp. 1584-1594 ◽

Cited By ~ 99

Author(s):

Martin Kronbichler ◽

Jürgen Bergmann ◽

Florian Hutzler ◽

Wolfgang Staffen ◽

Alois Mair ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Word Recognition ◽

Word Processing ◽

Functional Neuroimaging ◽

Imaging Study ◽

Visual Word ◽

Decision Task ◽

Familiarity Effect ◽

Visual Word Form Area ◽

Orthographic Representations ◽

Occipitotemporal Cortex

The importance of the left occipitotemporal cortex for visual word processing is highlighted by numerous functional neuroimaging studies, but the precise function of the visual word form area (VWFA) in this brain region is still under debate. The present functional magnetic resonance imaging study varied orthographic familiarity independent from phonological-semantic familiarity by presenting orthographically familiar and orthographically unfamiliar forms (pseudohomophones) of the same words in a phonological lexical decision task. Consistent with orthographic word recognition in the VWFA, we found lower activation for familiar compared with unfamiliar forms, but no difference between pseudohomophones and pseudowords. This orthographic familiarity effect in the VWFA differed from the phonological familiarity effect in left frontal regions, where phonologically unfamiliar pseudowords led to higher activation than phonologically familiar pseudohomophones. We suggest that the VWFA not only computes letter string representations but also hosts word-specific orthographic representations. These representations function as recognition units with the effect that letter strings that readily match with stored representations lead to less activation than letter strings that do not.

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The contribution of phonological information to visual word recognition: Evidence from Chinese Phonetic Radicals

10.31234/osf.io/39sav ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Xiaodong Liu ◽

Luc Vermeylen ◽

David Wisniewski ◽

Marc Brysbaert

Keyword(s):

Visual Cortex ◽

Word Recognition ◽

Visual Word Recognition ◽

Language Production ◽

Word Processing ◽

Right Hemisphere ◽

Visual Word ◽

Target Color ◽

Chinese Characters ◽

Phonological Information

Lateralization is a critical characteristic of language production and also plays a role in visual word recognition. However, the neural mechanisms underlying the interactions between visual input and spoken word representations are still unclear. We investigated the contribution of sub-lexical phonological information in visual word processing by exploiting the fact that Chinese characters can contain phonetic radicals in either the left or right half of the character. FMRI data were collected while 39 Chinese participants read words in search for target color words. On the basis of whole-brain analysis and three laterality analyses of regions of interest, we argue that visual information from centrally presented Chinese characters is split in the fovea and projected to the contralateral visual cortex, from which phonological information can be extracted rapidly if the character contains a phonetic radical. Extra activation, suggestive of more effortful processing, is observed when the phonetic radical is situated in the left half of the character and therefore initially sent to the visual cortex in the right hemisphere that is less specialized for language processing. Our results are in line with the proposal that phonological information helps written word processing by means of top-down feedback.

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The Visual Word Form Area: Evidence from an fMRI study of implicit processing of Chinese characters

NeuroImage ◽

10.1016/j.neuroimage.2007.10.014 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 40 (3) ◽

pp. 1350-1361 ◽

Cited By ~ 73

Author(s):

Chao Liu ◽

Wu-Tian Zhang ◽

Yi-Yuan Tang ◽

Xiao-Qin Mai ◽

Hsuan-Chih Chen ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Visual Word ◽

Chinese Characters ◽

Word Form ◽

Implicit Processing ◽

Visual Word Form Area ◽

Fmri Study

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On the Functional Neuroanatomy of Visual Word Processing: Effects of Case and Letter Deviance

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience ◽

10.1162/jocn.2009.21002 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 21 (2) ◽

pp. 222-229 ◽

Cited By ~ 36

Author(s):

Martin Kronbichler ◽

Johannes Klackl ◽

Fabio Richlan ◽

Matthias Schurz ◽

Wolfgang Staffen ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Word Processing ◽

Imaging Study ◽

Visual Word ◽

Temporal Region ◽

Functional Neuroanatomy ◽

Visual Words ◽

Visual Word Form Area ◽

Left Posterior ◽

Processing Effects ◽

Letter Processing

This functional magnetic resonance imaging study contrasted case-deviant and letter-deviant forms with familiar forms of the same phonological words (e.g., TaXi and Taksi vs. Taxi) and found that both types of deviance led to increased activation in a left occipito-temporal region, corresponding to the visual word form area (VWFA). The sensitivity of the VWFA to both types of deviance may suggest that this region represents well-known visual words not only as sequences of abstract letter identities but also includes information on the typical case-format pattern of visual words. Case-deviant items, in addition, led to increased activation in a right occipito-temporal region and in a left occipital and a left posterior occipito-temporal region, which may reflect increased demands on letter processing posed by the case-deviant forms.

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Encoding in the Visual Word Form Area: An fMRI Adaptation Study of Words versus Handwriting

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience ◽

10.1162/jocn.2009.21286 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 22 (8) ◽

pp. 1649-1661 ◽

Cited By ~ 26

Author(s):

Jason J. S. Barton ◽

Christopher J. Fox ◽

Alla Sekunova ◽

Giuseppe Iaria

Keyword(s):

Text Processing ◽

Handwriting Recognition ◽

Visual Word ◽

Middle Temporal Gyrus ◽

Word Form ◽

Visual Word Form Area ◽

Repetition Suppression ◽

The Right ◽

Fmri Adaptation ◽

Left Middle Temporal Gyrus

Written texts are not just words but complex multidimensional stimuli, including aspects such as case, font, and handwriting style, for example. Neuropsychological reports suggest that left fusiform lesions can impair the reading of text for word (lexical) content, being associated with alexia, whereas right-sided lesions may impair handwriting recognition. We used fMRI adaptation in 13 healthy participants to determine if repetition–suppression occurred for words but not handwriting in the left visual word form area (VWFA) and the reverse in the right fusiform gyrus. Contrary to these expectations, we found adaptation for handwriting but not for words in both the left VWFA and the right VWFA homologue. A trend to adaptation for words but not handwriting was seen only in the left middle temporal gyrus. An analysis of anterior and posterior subdivisions of the left VWFA also failed to show any adaptation for words. We conclude that the right and the left fusiform gyri show similar patterns of adaptation for handwriting, consistent with a predominantly perceptual contribution to text processing.

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