Semantic and phonological processing in illiteracy (original) (raw)
Related papers
Lexical Processing in Illiteracy: Effect of Literacy or Education
Cortex, 2006
Difficulties in phonological processing in illiterates have been attributed to their limited phonological awareness, a consequence of their lack of literacy. We sought to explore the potential influence of education on auditory lexical processing above and beyond literacy per se. In order to achieve this goal, we compared a lexical decision making paradigm with a repetition paradigm using words and pseudo-words. We based this choice of tasks on previous research, which has shown that pseudo-word repetition is dependent on the phonological loop; such studies have thus demonstrated a literacy effect on repetition. Instead, lexical decision making is known to depend on the size of one's vocabulary, which is influenced by the level of education attained. Our sample comprised three groups: illiterate no education, literate/low education and literate/high education, individuals. The pattern of our findings confirmed that literacy has an effect on the capacity of the phonological loop, as our illiterate group alone had difficulty with repetition, as compared with both literate/educated groups. Also, our findings suggested an education effect on lexical decision making, as we found a gradation in the performance of the three groups. Therefore, we succeeded in dissecting the effect of literacy and education on auditory lexical processing through the application and comparison of two simple paradigms.
Neuropsychological Aspects of Illiteracy
Neuropsychological Rehabilitation, 1997
The study of subjects who never learn the written representation of language is important because it allows us (1) to understand how oral language processing can be modified through learning a grapheme-phoneme matching operation, (2) to understand if different areas of the brain are involved in the processing of oral language when comparing literate and illiterate subjects, (3) to identify adequate neuropsychological instruments to assess cognitive dysfunction due to brain lesions in poorly educated persons, and (4) to study possible alternative cognitive strategies spontaneously developed by illiterate subjects that may be useful for rehabilitation.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 2000
& Previous behavioral and functional neuroimaging data indicate that certain aspects of phonological processing may not be acquired spontaneously, but are modulated by learning an alphabetic written language, that is, learning to read and write. It appears that learning an alphabetic written language modifies the auditory-verbal (spoken) language processing competence in a nontrivial way. We have previously suggested, based on behavioral and functional neuroimaging data, that auditory-verbal and written language interact not only during certain language tasks, but that learning and developing alphabetic written language capacities significantly modulates the spoken language system. Specifically, the acquisition of alphabetic orthographic knowledge has a modulatory influence on sublexical phonological processing and the awareness of sublexical phonological structure. We have suggested that developing an orthographic representation system for an alphabetic written language, and integrating a phoneme± grapheme correspondence with an existing infrastructure for auditory-verbal language processing, will result in a modified language network. Specifically, we suggest that the parallel interactive processing characteristics of the underlying language-processing brain network differ in literate and illiterate subjects. Therefore, the pattern of interactions between the regions of a suitably defined large-scale functional-anatomical network for language processing will differ between literate and illiterate subjects during certain language tasks. In order to investigate this hypothesis further, we analyzed the observed covariance structure in a PET data set from a simple auditory-D
Semantic interference on a phonological task in illiterate subjects
2007
Previous research suggests that learning an alphabetic written language influences aspects of the auditory-verbal language system. In this study, we examined whether literacy influences the notion of words as phonological units independent of lexical semantics in literate and illiterate subjects. Subjects had to decide which item in a word-or pseudoword pair was phonologically longest. By manipulating the relationship between referent size and phonological length in three word conditions (congruent, neutral, and incongruent) we could examine to what extent subjects focused on form rather than meaning of the stimulus material. Moreover, the pseudoword condition allowed us to examine global phonological awareness independent of lexical semantics. The results showed that literate performed significantly better than illiterate subjects in the neutral and incongruent word conditions as well as in the pseudoword condition. The illiterate group performed least well in the incongruent condition and significantly better in the pseudoword condition compared to the neutral and incongruent word conditions and suggest that performance on phonological word length comparisons is dependent on literacy. In addition, the results show that the illiterate participants are able to perceive and process phonological length, albeit less well than the literate subjects, when no semantic interference is present. In conclusion, the present results confirm and extend the finding that illiterate subjects are biased towards semantic-conceptual-pragmatic types of cognitive processing.
The current understanding of hemispheric interaction is limited. Functional hemispheric specialization is likely to depend on both genetic and environmental factors. In the present study we investigated the importance of one factor, literacy, for the functional lateralization in the inferior parietal cortex in two independent samples of literate and illiterate subjects. The results show that the illiterate group are consistently more right-lateralized than their literate controls. In contrast, the two groups showed a similar degree of left-right differences in early speech-related regions of the superior temporal cortex. These results provide evidence suggesting that a cultural factor, literacy, influences the functional hemispheric balance in reading and verbal working memory-related regions. In a third sample, we investigated grey and white matter with voxel-based morphometry. The results showed differences between literacy groups in white matter intensities related to the mid-body region of the corpus callosum and the inferior parietal and parietotemporal regions (literate > illiterate). There were no corresponding differences in the grey matter. This suggests that the influence of literacy on brain structure related to reading and verbal working memory is affecting large-scale brain connectivity more than grey matter per se.
Brain, 1998
Learning a specific skill during childhood may partly determine the functional organization of the adult brain. This hypothesis led us to study oral language processing in illiterate subjects who, for social reasons, had never entered school and had no knowledge of reading or writing. In a brain activation study using PET and statistical parametric mapping, we compared word and pseudoword repetition in literate and illiterate subjects. Our study confirms behavioural evidence of different phonological processing in illiterate subjects. During Abbreviations: BA ϭ Brodmann area; rCBF ϭ regional cerebral blood flow; SPM ϭ statistical parametric mapping Worsley KJ, Evans AC, Marrett S, Neelin P. A three-dimensional statistical analysis for CBF activation studies in human brain [see comments].
Neurobiological Substrates of Illiteracy
The Neuroscientist, 2000
Comparable subjects except for the knowledge of orthography and school attendance in the proper age provided the case material for a series of studies that are reviewed. The results suggest that the acquisition of orthographic skills provides a basis for changes in the pattern of activation of the brain. NEUROSCIENTIST 6(6): [475][476][477][478][479][480][481][482] 2000
bioRxiv, 2021
Previous research suggest that literacy, specifically learning alphabetic letter-to-phoneme mappings, modifies online speech processing, and enhances brain responses to speech in auditory areas associated with phonological processing (Dehaene et al., 2010). However, alphabets are not the only orthographic systems in use in the world, and hundreds of millions of individuals speak languages that are not written using alphabets. In order to make claims that literacy per se has broad and general consequences for brain responses to speech, one must seek confirmatory evidence from non-alphabetic literacy. To this end, we conducted a longitudinal fMRI study in India probing the effect of literacy in Devanagari, an abubgida, on functional connectivity and cerebral responses to speech in 91 variously literate Hindi-speaking individuals. Twenty-two completely illiterate participants underwent six months of reading and writing training. Devanagari literacy increases functional connectivity bet...