Abstract
Conquering print-sound mappings (e.g., grapheme-phoneme correspondence rules) is vital for developing fluent reading skills. In neuroimaging research, this ability can be indexed by activation differences between audiovisual congruent against incongruent conditions in brain areas such as the left superior temporal cortex. In line with it, individuals with dyslexia have difficulty in tasks requiring print-sound processing, accompanied by a reduced neural integration. However, existing evidence is almost restricted to alphabetic languages. Whether and how multisensory processing of print and sound is impaired in Chinese dyslexia remains underexplored. In this study, we applied a passive audiovisual integration paradigm with functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate the possible dysfunctions in processing character-sound (opaque; semantics can be automatically accessed) and pinyin-sound associations (transparent; no particular meaning can be confirmed) in Chinese dyslexic children. Unexpectedly, the dyslexic group did not show reduced neural integration compared with typically developing readers in either character or pinyin experiment. However, the results revealed atypical correlations between neural integration and different reading abilities in dyslexia. Specifically, while the neural integration in the left inferior frontal cortex in processing character-sound pairs correlated with silent reading comprehension in both children with and without dyslexia, it was associated with morphological awareness (semantic-related) in controls but with rapid naming (phonological-related) in dyslexics. This result indicates Chinese dyslexic children may not use the same grapho-semantic processing strategy as their typical peers do. As for pinyin-sound processing, while a stronger neural integration in the direction of “congruent > incongruent” in the left occipito-temporal cortex and bilateral superior temporal cortices was associated with better oral reading fluency in the control group, an opposite pattern was found in dyslexia. This finding may reflect dyslexia's dysfunctional recruitment of the regions in grapho-phonological processing, which further impedes character learning.
Highlights
Reading consists of multiple cognitive processes, and it takes years of formal instruction to achieve a high proficiency
While existing evidence is almost restricted to alphabetic orthographies, the question of whether and to what extent print-sound integration is impaired in Chinese children with dyslexia remains underexplored, especially at the neurofunctional level
The current results showed that while the left inferior frontal cortex (IFC) was strongly involved in the character-sound integration in both groups, it was more associated with articulatory phonological processing in dyslexia and semantic-related morphological processing in typical children
Summary
Reading consists of multiple cognitive processes, and it takes years of formal instruction to achieve a high proficiency. In this process, establishing robust links between orthographic and phonological representations (e.g., grapheme-phoneme correspondence [GPC] rules) is one initial and fundamental step (Perfetti and Harris, 2013). Behavioral and neuroimaging studies of alphabetic languages have revealed that it is critical to conquer the GPC rules to develop fluent reading skills. Most researchers agree that the manifestation of dyslexia is associated with linguistic features in a given language (Richlan, 2020). While existing evidence is almost restricted to alphabetic orthographies, the question of whether and to what extent print-sound integration is impaired in Chinese children with dyslexia remains underexplored, especially at the neurofunctional level
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