Expertise with characters in alphabetic and nonalphabetic writing systems engage overlapping occipito-temporal areas
Abstract
Parts of the left ventral visual pathway are engaged selectively during the perception of words, letter strings, and even single letters. While studies have shown overlap between activations for letters and characters across writing systems, they adopted group analyses with very limited spatial resolution, or used words and letter strings that have been shown to activate different regions from those activated by single characters. The current study compared activity within individual participants for the perception of single characters from different writing systems. Roman letters, Chinese characters, objects, and faces were presented to Chinese-English bilinguals and English readers with no Chinese reading experience. Individual subject analyses revealed a large overlap between Roman- and Chinese-selective areas in the bilinguals. In general, the activity in the Roman-selective area of the left hemisphere is associated with experience with the script, as non-Chinese readers showed lower activations to Chinese characters than to Roman letters. Further analyses found considerable variation within non-Chinese readers in the activation for Chinese characters: while the majority had no selectivity for Chinese characters at all, some showed activations for Chinese characters at locations similar to those selective for Roman letters. The results suggest that both stimulus properties and experience are important factors in determining the response to single characters across writing systems.
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In skilled readers, activation in the left ventral occipitotemporal cortex decreased with experience/exposure to the same stimuli and for stimuli with high relative to low orthographic familiarity and lexical frequency.
“However, in skilled readers, activation decreased with experience/exposure to the same stimuli (Wong et al., 2009; Xue et al., 2010; Song et al., 2010a, 2010b; Xue and Poldrack, 2007) and for stimuli with high relative to low orthographic familiarity (Kronbichler et al., 2007; Bruno et al., 2008) and lexical frequency (Kronbichler et al., 2007).”
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 Wong et al., 2009
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- Authors
- Wong, A. C.-N., Jobard, G., James, K. H., James, T. W., & Gauthier, I.
- Affiliations
- Chinese University of Hong Kong (HK)
- Indiana University Bloomington (US)
- Corresponding author
- Wong, Alan C.-N.
- Venue
- Cognitive Neuropsychology
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2009-02
- Volume
- 26
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 111-127
- ISSN
- 0264-3294 (ISSN-L)
- 1464-0627
- OpenAlex
- W2125958230
- Cited by
- 85
- References
- 52
- Citations by year
- 2024: 1 · 2021: 3 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 3 · 2017: 2 · 2016: 5 · 2015: 1 · 2014: 46 · 2013: 6 · 2012: 3
- FWCI
- 6.44
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Cognitive Neuropsychology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- HAL (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- U.S. Public Health Service (EV13441-01)
- 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 › Face Recognition and Perception
- Keywords
- Chinese characters, Latin letters, occipitotemporal cortex, individual differences, Chinese-English bilinguals, visual word recognition
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Brain Mapping, Female, Humans, Image Processing, Computer-Assisted, Functional Laterality, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Neural Pathways, Occipital Lobe, Oxygen, Pattern Recognition, Visual, Photic Stimulation, Reaction Time, Reading, Semantics, Temporal Lobe, Vocabulary, Writing, Multilingualism, Young Adult
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