Word or word-like? Dissociating orthographic typicality from lexicality in the left occipito-temporal cortex
Open accessAbstract
Prior lesion and functional imaging studies have highlighted the importance of the left ventral occipito-temporal (LvOT) cortex for visual word recognition. Within this area, there is a posterior-anterior hierarchy of subregions that are specialized for different stages of orthographic processing. The aim of the present fMRI study was to dissociate the effects of subword orthographic typicality (e.g., cider [high] vs. cynic [low]) from the effect of lexicality (e.g., pollen [word] vs. pillen [pseudoword]). We therefore orthogonally manipulated the orthographic typicality of written words and pseudowords (nonwords and pseudohomophones) in a visual lexical decision task. Consistent with previous studies, we identified greater activation for pseudowords than words (i.e., an effect of lexicality) in posterior LvOT cortex. In addition, we revealed higher activation for atypical than typical strings, irrespective of lexicality, in a left inferior occipital region that is posterior to LvOT cortex. When lexical decisions were made more difficult in the context of pseudohomophone foils, left anterior temporal activation also increased for atypical relative to typical strings. The latter finding agrees with the behavior of patients with progressive anterior temporal lobe degeneration, who have particular difficulty recognizing words with atypical orthography. The most novel outcome of this study is that, within a distributed network of regions supporting orthographic processing, we have identified a left inferior occipital region that is particularly sensitive to the typicality of subword orthographic patterns.
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The left posterior occipitotemporal cortex was more activated by pseudowords than real words.
“Studies comparing word and pseudoword reading within script provided further evidence that the left posterior occipitotemporal cortex was more activated by pseudowords than real words (Levy et al., 2009; Nosarti et al., 2010; Woollams 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 Woollams et al., 2011
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- Authors
- Woollams, A. M., Silani, G., Okada, K., Patterson, K., & Price, C. J.
- Affiliations
- University of Manchester (GB)
- University of Zurich (CH)
- University College London (GB)
- University of Cambridge (GB)
- Venue
- Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
- Publisher
- MIT Press - Journals
- Published
- 2011-04-01
- Volume
- 23
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 992-1002
- ISSN
- 0898-929X (ISSN-L)
- 1530-8898
- PMC
- PMC4753674
- OpenAlex
- W2111777058
- Cited by
- 54
- References
- 49
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 2 · 2022: 2 · 2021: 4 · 2020: 2 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 2 · 2016: 5 · 2015: 8 · 2014: 3 · 2013: 8 · 2012: 5
- FWCI
- 9.21
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Research Explorer (The University of Manchester) (submittedVersion)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Wellcome Trust (097720, 082420)
- National Institutes of Health
- National Institute of Mental Health (P50MH064445, MH64445)
- 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
- lexicality, visual word recognition, pseudowords, pseudohomophones
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Analysis of Variance, Brain Mapping, Female, Humans, Image Processing, Computer-Assisted, Functional Laterality, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Neuropsychological Tests, Occipital Lobe, Oxygen, Pattern Recognition, Visual, Predictive Value of Tests, Psycholinguistics, Reaction Time, Temporal Lobe, Vocabulary
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