The brain signature of emerging reading in two contrasting languages

Abstract

Despite dissimilarities among scripts, a universal hallmark of literacy in skilled readers is the convergent brain activity for print and speech. Little is known, however, whether this differs as a function of grapheme to phoneme transparency in beginning readers. Here we compare speech and orthographic processing circuits in two contrasting languages, Polish and English, in 100 7-year-old children performing fMRI language localizer tasks. Results show limited language variation, with speech-print convergence evident mostly in left frontotemporal perisylvian regions. Correlational and intersect analyses revealed subtle differences in the strength of this coupling in several regions of interest. Specifically, speech-print convergence was higher for transparent Polish than opaque English in the right temporal area, associated with phonological processing. Conversely, speech-print convergence was higher for English than Polish in left fusiform, associated with visual word recognition. We conclude that speech-print convergence is a universal marker of reading even at the beginning of reading acquisition with minor variations that can be explained by the differences in grapheme to phoneme transparency. This finding at the earliest stages of reading acquisition conforms well with claims that reading exhibits a good deal of universality despite writing systems differences.