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Reading in a Regular Orthography: an Fmri Study Investigating the Role of Visual Familiarity

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Reading in a Regular Orthography: an Fmri Study Investigating the Role of Visual Familiarity Reading in a Regular Orthography: An fMRI Study Investigating the Role of Visual Familiarity Anja Ischebeck1, Peter Indefrey2,3, Nobuo Usui4, Izuru Nose5, Frauke Hellwig2,3, and Masato Taira4 Downloaded from http://mitprc.silverchair.com/jocn/article-pdf/16/5/727/1758172/089892904970708.pdf by guest on 18 May 2021 Abstract & In order to separate the cognitive processes associated with the three different stimulus types (familiar, unfamiliar, and phonological encoding and the use of a visual word form pseudoword) were found to activate selectively different brain lexicon in reading, it is desirable to compare the processing of regions previously associated with phonological encoding and words presented in a visually familiar form with words in a word retrieval or meaning. Compatible with the predictions of visually unfamiliar form. Japanese Kana orthography offers this the dual-route model for reading, pseudowords and visually possibility. Two phonologically equivalent but visually dissim- unfamiliar words, which have to be read using phonological ilar syllabaries allow the writing of, for example, foreign assembly, caused an increase in brain activity in left inferior loanwords in two ways, only one of which is visually familiar. frontal regions (BA 44/47), as compared to visually familiar Familiarly written words, unfamiliarly written words, and words. Visually familiar and unfamiliar words were found to pseudowords were presented in both Kana syllabaries (yield- activate a range of areas associated with lexico-semantic ing six conditions in total) to participants during an fMRI processing more strongly than pseudowords, such as the left measurement with a silent articulation task (Experiment 1) and and right temporo-parietal region (BA 39/40), a region in the a phonological lexical decision task (Experiment 2) using an left middle/inferior temporal gyrus (BA 20/21), and the event-related design. Consistent over two experimental tasks, posterior cingulate (BA 31). & INTRODUCTION gent results. The route for phonological encoding using Models of normal reading often assume two different the GPC rules, also referred to as assembled phonology, pathways to arrive at the correct pronunciation of a has been identified with the left inferior frontal region written word. In the dual-route model of reading (for a (BA 44/45) (e.g., Fiez, Balota, Raichle, & Petersen, 1999). review, see Coltheart, Curtis, Atkins, & Haller, 1993) it is Other researchers have suggested that the sublexical assumed that the pronunciation of a word can be either procedure is localized in the left posterior superior assembled sequentially from the word’s letters or gra- temporal region (e.g., Paulesu et al., 2000). The direct phemes according to a set of grapheme to phoneme route of visual word form retrieval, often referred to as conversion rules (GPC rules) or retrieved directly from accessed phonology, has been identified with a number memory if the visual form of the word as a whole has of diverse brain regions: the left posterior middle tem- been recognized. For example, pseudowords (pro- poral gyrus, including the angular gyrus (e.g., Howard nounceable nonwords) can only be read by phonolog- et al., 1992), areas in the left temporo-occipital lobe, ical assembly according to the GPC rules, whereas words especially the left fusiform gyrus (e.g., Cohen et al., with an irregular spelling, that is, a spelling that does not 2000), and the left and right extrastriate cortices (e.g., Pe- conform to the GPC rules of the respective orthography, tersen, Fox, Posner, Mintun, & Raichle, 1988). are read more successfully via the visual word form This lack of agreement might be attributable to a lexicon. Orthographically regular written words on the number of reasons, methodological as well as inherent. other hand can be read via both routes. Methodologically, the incommensurability of the tasks A number of studies have ventured to identify the and stimuli used in many subtraction designs in brain neural correlates of these two routes but yielded diver- imaging research, as well as the assumptions of li- nearity and pure insertion, might critically impair the reproducibility of results across experiments and their 1University of Nijmegen, 2Max Planck Institute for Psycholin- interpretation (see, for a review, Friston et al., 1996). guistics, 3F. C. Donders Center for Cognitive Neuroimaging, Furthermore, block designs, mandatory for PET experi- 4Nihon University Graduate School of Medical Science, 5Bunkyo ments, can induce strategic effects (d’Esposito, Zarahn, & Gakuin University Aguirre, 1999). Inherent reasons related to the nature of D 2004 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 16:5, pp. 727–741 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/089892904970708 by guest on 26 September 2021 the neural implementation of the two routes might also though Chinese characters are often used for the repre- account for the difficulty in finding unambiguous evi- sentation of words or morphemes, there are also many dence for them. First, the cognitive functions under words written usually in one of the syllabic Kana scrutiny might be subserved by several functionally spe- scripts: Foreign loanwords are usually represented with cialized areas, highly sensitive to differences in stimulus Katakana, whereas another class of words, for example, materials and task requirements. Alternatively, visual botanical names or words denoting native Japanese word form processing might be so effortless that it food items, are usually written with Hiragana. Words remains inconspicuous given the signal-to-noise ratio of that are regularly or exclusively written with Kana char- present imaging methods. acters form a subset of the vocabulary. In general, they The present study avoids some of the methodological are written, and judged to be visually very familiar, in Downloaded from http://mitprc.silverchair.com/jocn/article-pdf/16/5/727/1758172/089892904970708.pdf by guest on 18 May 2021 problems by directly comparing different script variants either one of the two syllabaries. Rewritten in the other of the same word and pseudoword stimuli in a silent syllabary they are judged as being visually very unfamiliar articulation task (Experiment 1). The randomization of (for an overview of stimulus properties, see Table 1). For different stimulus types in an event-related design pre- example, the Japanese loanword for video, pronounced vents confounds due to low-frequency signal shifts bi.de.o, is usually written with Katakana: . The (Donaldson & Buckner, 2001) and strategic adaptation same word is rated as being visually very unfamiliar by by participants. Additionally, the same materials were skilled readers of Japanese when it is rewritten with presented in a phonological lexical decision task (Exper- Hiragana: (for examples of the stimuli, see iment 2). In this variant of a lexical decision task, Figure 1). Both syllabaries are used approximately equally participants have to press one button if a letter string frequently and GPC rules are identical for both scripts. sounds like a real word, and another button if not. This If visually familiar Kana words are read using the direct task basically requires the same processing steps as the visual route, differences between visually familiar and silent articulation task (see the Discussion section for a unfamiliar words observed in a brain imaging experiment task analysis). It is thus possible to check the consistency might therefore indicate the neural correlates of the of the results over tasks and experiments and to attri- direct visual pathway. However, because Japanese Kana bute differences in brain activation patterns to differ- orthography is perfectly regular, it has been hypothe- ences in the stimulus materials. sized in the past that native speakers of Japanese might The two pathways postulated by the dual-route model make no use at all of the direct visual pathway and rely can be investigated by comparing stimuli that can be exclusively on the phonological assembly route (e.g., read via one pathway to stimuli that can be read over the Yamadori, 2000; Iwata, 1984). In a task of reading Kana other or both pathways. Orthographically regular and words aloud they might even skip lexical access entirely. visually highly familiar words (i.e., words well known to This is known as the strictest version of the orthographic the reader) are assumed to be read over both routes, depth hypothesis (Katz & Frost, 1992). If this hypothesis whereas the same words presented in a visually unfa- in this strict sense were true, an experiment using miliar way can only be read using sequential phonolog- Japanese Kana words would not succeed in yielding ical encoding. A comparison of both could shed some information about the visual pathway. Behavioral studies, light on the neural basis of the dual-route model. There however, do not support this version of the orthographic are possibilities to achieve this experimental variation in depth hypothesis. Visual familiarity and the lexical status alphabetic scripts, such as mirror writing and case of Kana words have been found to facilitate reaction alternation (e.g., nIgHt). These manipulations have al- ready been employed in neuroimaging studies (mirror writing: Dong et al., 2000; case alternation: Polk & Farah, Table 1. Mean Values of the Kana Word Properties for their 2002). One limitation to this approach, however, is that Presentation in Familiar and Unfamiliar Script
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