Brain sensitivity to print emerges when children learn letter-speech sound correspondences
Open accessAbstract
The acquisition of reading skills is a major landmark process in a human's cognitive development. On the neural level, a new functional network develops during this time, as children typically learn to associate the well-known sounds of their spoken language with unfamiliar characters in alphabetic languages and finally access the meaning of written words, allowing for later reading. A critical component of the mature reading network located in the left occipito-temporal cortex, termed the "visual word-form system" (VWFS), exhibits print-sensitive activation in readers. When and how the sensitivity of the VWFS to print comes about remains an open question. In this study, we demonstrate the initiation of occipito-temporal cortex sensitivity to print using functional MRI (fMRI) (n = 16) and event-related potentials (ERP) (n = 32) in a controlled, longitudinal training study. Print sensitivity of fast (<250 ms) processes in posterior occipito-temporal brain regions accompanied basic associative learning of letter-speech sound correspondences in young (mean age 6.4 +/- 0.08 y) nonreading kindergarten children, as shown by concordant ERP and fMRI results. The occipito-temporal print sensitivity thus is established during the earliest phase of reading acquisition in childhood, suggesting that a crucial part of the later reading network first adopts a role in mapping print and sound.
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In the early stages of children or adults learning to read, left ventral occipitotemporal activation increased with learning and correlated with the rate of improvement in word recognition.
“In the early stages of children or adults learning to read, left ventral occipitotemporal activation increased with learning (Brem et al., 2010; Dehaene et al., 2010b) and this correlated with the rate of improvement in word recognition (Ben-Shachar et al., 2011).”
From A review and synthesis of the first 20years of PET and fMRI studies of heard speech, spoken language and reading (2012) · cites this paper as Brem et al., 2010
Few long-term studies have followed brain changes that support reading growth in typical children.
“For these reasons and others, long-term longitudinal studies of brain changes underlying reading development in the normal population are still quite rare, and the longitudinal perspective is used mostly for testing intervention effects (Brem et al., 2010; Shaywitz et al., 2004; Temple et al., 2003).”
From The Development of Cortical Sensitivity to Visual Word Forms (2011) · cites this paper as Brem et al., 2010
The study shows rising word response curves in children as young as 7, consistent with recent German-reader reports.
“We demonstrate rising response curves to words in children as young as 7 years, in agreement with recent reports in German readers (Brem et al., 2010).”
From The Development of Cortical Sensitivity to Visual Word Forms (2011) · cites this paper as Brem et al., 2010
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- Authors
- Brem, S., Bach, S., Kucian, K., Kujala, J. V., Guttorm, T. K., Martin, E., Lyytinen, H., Brandeis, D., & Richardson, U.
- Affiliations
- University of Zurich (CH)
- University Children's Hospital Zurich (CH)
- Agora (NL)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2010-04-15
- Volume
- 107
- Issue
- 17
- Pages
- 7939-7944
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- PMC
- PMC2867899
- OpenAlex
- W2090169869
- Cited by
- 456
- References
- 35
- Citations by year
- 2026: 11 · 2025: 25 · 2024: 20 · 2023: 47 · 2022: 25 · 2021: 35 · 2020: 32 · 2019: 26 · 2018: 33 · 2017: 32 · 2016: 23 · 2015: 24 · 2014: 36 · 2013: 29 · 2012: 25
- FWCI
- 51.24
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Update notices
- correction (2014-11-25)
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Zurich Open Repository and Archive (University of Zurich) (acceptedVersion, other-oa)
- Jyväskylä University Digital Archive (University of Jyväskylä) (submittedVersion)
- Zurich Open Repository and Archive (University of Zurich) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Zurich Open Repository and Archive (University of Zurich)
- Funders
- European Commission
- Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology
- Hartmann Müller-Stiftung für Medizinische Forschung
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Reading and Literacy Development
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Visual perception and processing mechanisms
- Keywords
- reading acquisition, phonological awareness, occipitotemporal cortex, early reading, kindergarten children, neural correlates of reading, alphabetic writing
- MeSH terms
- Analysis of Variance, Brain Mapping, Child, Child, Preschool, Evoked Potentials, Humans, Language, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Occipital Lobe, Pattern Recognition, Visual, Reading, Temporal Lobe
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