Children with dyslexia lack multiple specializations along the visual word-form (VWF) system.
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Developmental dyslexia has been associated with a dysfunction of a brain region in the left inferior occipitotemporal cortex, called the "visual word-form area" (VWFA). In adult normal readers, the VWFA is specialized for print processing and sensitive to the orthographic familiarity of letter strings. However, it is still unclear whether these two levels of occipitotemporal specialization are affected in developmental dyslexia. Specifically, we investigated whether (a) these two levels of specialization are impaired in dyslexic children with only a few years of reading experience and (b) whether this impairment is confined to the left inferior occipitotemporal VWFA, or extends to adjacent regions of the "VWF-system" with its posterior-anterior gradient of print specialization. Using fMRI, we measured brain activity in 18 dyslexic and 24 age-matched control children (age 9.7-12.5 years) while they indicated if visual stimuli (real words, pseudohomophones, pseudowords and false-fonts) sounded like a real word. Five adjacent regions of interest (ROIs) in the bilateral occipitotemporal cortex covered the full anterior-posterior extent of the VWF-system. We found that control and dyslexic children activated the same main areas within the reading network. However, a gradient of print specificity (higher anterior activity to letter strings but higher posterior activity to false-fonts) as well as a constant sensitivity to orthographic familiarity (higher activity for unfamiliar than familiar word-forms) along the VWF-system could only be detected in controls. In conclusion, analyzing responses and specialization profiles along the left VWF-system reveals that children with dyslexia show impaired specialization for both print and orthography.
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This system's proper development matters for English and possibly more so for other writing systems.
“The proper development of this system is surely relevant in English (Shaywitz et al., 2002), but it may be even more important in other writing systems (van der Mark et al., 2009; Share, 2008; Ziegler, 2006; Siok, Perfetti, Jin, & Tan, 2004; Holopainen, Ahonen, & Lyytinen, 2001; Paulesu et al., 2001).”
From The Development of Cortical Sensitivity to Visual Word Forms (2011) · cites this paper as van der Mark et al., 2009
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The Development of Cortical Sensitivity to Visual Word Forms
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- Authors
- van der Mark, S., Bucher, K., Maurer, U., Schulz, E., Brem, S., Buckelmüller, J., Kronbichler, M., Loenneker, T., Klaver, P., Martin, E., & Brandeis, D.
- Affiliations
- University of Zurich (CH)
- University of Salzburg (AT)
- Corresponding author
- Brandeis, Daniel
- Venue
- NeuroImage
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2009-10
- Volume
- 47
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 1940-1949
- ISSN
- 1053-8119 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2079500371
- Semantic Scholar
- 03ab97a0c7aa31851a89080e494ccd6fc2b48b6d
- Cited by
- 232
- References
- 56
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 9 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 12 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 13 · 2020: 17 · 2019: 12 · 2018: 20 · 2017: 12 · 2016: 11 · 2015: 15 · 2014: 18 · 2013: 20 · 2012: 21
- FWCI
- 27.39
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.zora.uzh.ch
- Licence
- Locations
- NeuroImage (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Zurich Open Repository and Archive (University of Zurich) (acceptedVersion, other-oa)
- Open Research (University of Surrey) (submittedVersion)
- Surrey Research Insight Open Access (The University of Surrey) (submittedVersion)
- mediaTUM (Technical University of Munich) (submittedVersion)
- Zurich Open Repository and Archive (University of Zurich) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Zurich Open Repository and Archive (University of Zurich)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Reading and Literacy Development
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Neuropsychology and Physiological Psychology › Developmental and Educational Neuropsychology
- Keywords
- developmental dyslexia, visual word form area, occipitotemporal cortex, pseudohomophones, pseudowords, reading network, children, anterior-posterior gradient, brain specialization
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Cerebral Cortex, Child, Dyslexia, Female, Humans, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Reading, Task Performance and Analysis
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