Brice Henry, Mencl William Einar, Frost Stephen J, Bick Atira Sara, Rueckl Jay G, Pugh Kenneth R, Frost Ram
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.
Haskins Laboratories, New Haven, CT.
J Neurolinguistics. 2019 May;50:7-16. doi: 10.1016/j.jneuroling.2018.02.004. Epub 2018 Nov 12.
Recent evidence has shown that convergence of print and speech processing across a network of primarily left-hemisphere regions of the brain is a predictor of future reading skills in children, and a marker of fluent reading ability in adults. The present study extends these findings into the domain of second-language (L2) literacy, through brain imaging data of English and Hebrew L2 learners. Participants received an fMRI brain scan, while performing a semantic judgement task on spoken and written words and pseudowords in both their L1 and L2, alongside a battery of L1 and L2 behavioural measures. Imaging results show, overall, show a similar network of activation for reading across the two languages, alongside significant convergence of print and speech processing across a network of left-hemisphere regions in both L1 and L2 and in both cohorts. Importantly, convergence is greater for L1 in occipito-temporal regions tied to automatic skilled reading processes including the visual word-form area, but greater for L2 in frontal regions of the reading network, tied to more effortful, active processing. The main groupwise brain effects tell a similar story, with greater L2 than L1 activation across frontal, temporal and parietal regions, but greater L1 than L2 activation in parieto-occipital regions tied to automatic mapping processes in skilled reading. These results provide evidence for the shifting of the reading networks towards more automatic processing as reading proficiency rises and the mappings and statistics of the new orthography are learned and incorporated into the reading system.
最近的证据表明，大脑主要左半球区域网络中印刷和语音处理的融合是儿童未来阅读技能的预测指标，也是成年人流利阅读能力的标志。本研究通过对英语和希伯来语第二语言（L2）学习者的脑成像数据，将这些发现扩展到第二语言读写领域。参与者在对其第一语言（L1）和第二语言的口语和书面单词及假词执行语义判断任务时，接受了功能磁共振成像（fMRI）脑部扫描，同时还进行了一系列第一语言和第二语言的行为测量。成像结果总体显示，两种语言阅读时的激活网络相似，并且在第一语言和第二语言以及两个队列的左半球区域网络中，印刷和语音处理有显著融合。重要的是，在与包括视觉词形区在内的自动熟练阅读过程相关的枕颞区域，第一语言的融合程度更高，但在阅读网络的额叶区域，第二语言的融合程度更高，这与更费力、更主动的处理相关。主要的组间大脑效应也呈现出类似的情况，在额叶、颞叶和顶叶区域，第二语言的激活程度高于第一语言，但在与熟练阅读中的自动映射过程相关的顶枕区域，第一语言的激活程度高于第二语言。这些结果为随着阅读熟练程度的提高，阅读网络向更自动处理的转变提供了证据，同时也表明新正字法的映射和统计信息已被学习并纳入阅读系统。
