HOME HELP FEEDBACK SUBSCRIPTIONS ARCHIVE SEARCH TABLE OF CONTENTS		QUICK SEARCH:   [advanced] Author: Keyword(s): Year:  Vol:  Page:

This Article Full Text Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Booth, J. R. Articles by Mesulam, M. M. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Booth, J. R. Articles by Mesulam, M. M.

Development of Brain Mechanisms for Processing Orthographic and Phonologic Representations

¹ Northwestern University, ² Evanston Northwestern Healthcare, ³ Northwestern University Medical School

Developmental differences in the neurocognitive networks for lexical processing were examined in 15 adults and 15 children (9- to 12-year-olds) using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The lexical tasks involved spelling and rhyming judgments in either the visual or auditory modality. These lexical tasks were compared with nonlinguistic control tasks involving judgments of line patterns or tone sequences. The first main finding was that adults showed greater activation than children during the cross-modal lexical tasks in a region proposed to be involved in mapping between orthographic and phonologic representations. The visual rhyming task, which required conversion from orthography to phonology, produced greater activation for adults in the angular gyrus. The auditory spelling task, which required the conversion from phonology to orthography, also produced greater activation for adults in the angular gyrus. The greater activation for adults suggests they may have a more elaborated posterior heteromodal system for mapping between representational systems. The second main finding was that adults showed greater activation than children during the intra-modal lexical tasks in the angular gyrus. The visual spelling and auditory rhyming did not require conversion between orthography and phonology for correct performance but the adults showed greater activation in a system implicated for this mapping. The greater activation for adults suggests that they have more interactive convergence between representational systems during lexical processing.

This article has been cited by other articles:

				J. A. Church, R. S. Coalson, H. M. Lugar, S. E. Petersen, and B. L. Schlaggar A Developmental fMRI Study of Reading and Repetition Reveals Changes in Phonological and Visual Mechanisms Over Age Cereb Cortex, January 31, 2008; (2008) bhm228v1. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				A. Meyler, T. A. Keller, V. L. Cherkassky, D. Lee, F. Hoeft, S. Whitfield-Gabrieli, J. D. E. Gabrieli, and M. A. Just Brain Activation during Sentence Comprehension among Good and Poor Readers Cereb Cortex, December 1, 2007; 17(12): 2780 - 2787. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]