Poster No:
800
Submission Type:
Abstract Submission
Authors:
Wei-Hung Lin1, Tai-Li Chou1, Hsin-Chin Chen2, Shiou-Yuan Chen3, Li-Ying Fan4
Institutions:
1Department of Psychology, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, 2Department of Psychology, National Chung Cheng University, Chiayi, Taiwan, 3Department of Early Childhood Education, University of Taipei, Taipei, Taiwan, 4Department of Education, National Taipei University of Education, Taipei, Taiwan
First Author:
Wei-Hung Lin
Department of Psychology, National Taiwan University
Taipei, Taiwan
Co-Author(s):
Tai-Li Chou
Department of Psychology, National Taiwan University
Taipei, Taiwan
Hsin-Chin Chen
Department of Psychology, National Chung Cheng University
Chiayi, Taiwan
Shiou-Yuan Chen
Department of Early Childhood Education, University of Taipei
Taipei, Taiwan
Li-Ying Fan
Department of Education, National Taipei University of Education
Taipei, Taiwan
Introduction:
Reading is one of the most important skills for a child's academic development, and comprehension is a complex process, including readers to build up a mental representation of text, a process that requires integration across a range of sources of information, from lexical features to form world knowledge. Semantic processes play an important role in learning to read in Chinese because Chinese is considered to be a logographic language and thus visual form to meaning associations are crucial at the word level. Previous fMRI research has demonstrated the inferior frontal gyri (BAs 45, 47) and left middle temporal gyrus (BA 21) as the core components in the semantic network that contribute to support the processing for conceptual knowledge. However, little is known about early-literate influences on the neural functions of atypical semantic processing in young children. This study aimed to use functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) to investigate if brain activation of semantic processing would differ in children with potential reading disabilities relative to typically developing children.
Methods:
Fourteen children with potential reading disabilities (mean age, 8.5 ± 1.6; age range 7.3-11.6), and 14 gender-matched typically developing children (mean age, 9.7 ± 1.0; age range 7.7-11.0) were classified based on the Chinese character recognition test. Participants completed four kinds of literacy tasks to measure vocabulary, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and reading ability. During the fNIRS imaging task, children heard two words and were asked to indicate if word pairs were related in meaning. The semantic judgment task included two levels of semantic difficulty requiring either high-association (easy) or low-association (difficult). We investigated the differences in behavioral performance and neural activity between children with potential reading disabilities and typically developing children.
Results:
Behavioral results showed that typically developing children showed longer reaction time than children with potential reading disabilities in the low-association. In addition, fNIRS results revealed that typically developing children showed stronger activation in the right posterior superior temporal gyrus/inferior parietal lobe (pSTG/IPL) than children with potential reading disabilities in the high- relative to the low-association. In contrast, children with potential reading disabilities showed stronger activation in the left visual word form area (VWFA), the right middle frontal gyrus (MFG), and the bilateral supramarginal gyrus (SMG) than typically developing children in the high- relative to the low-association.
Conclusions:
Overall, our findings suggest that typically developing children might have an elaborated semantic system, enabling them to integrate semantic features with pSTG/IPL activation in the high-association. Also, while children with potential disabilities may rely more on phonological processes in the bilateral SMG to integrate highly related features in the high-association, their weak semantic system may require them to engage in additional feature selection processes in the right MFG to search for semantic relationships. Moreover, children with potential disabilities might develop different patterns of neural activity for semantic processing.
Language:
Language Comprehension and Semantics 1
Lifespan Development:
Normal Brain Development: Fetus to Adolescence
Modeling and Analysis Methods:
Activation (eg. BOLD task-fMRI)
Novel Imaging Acquisition Methods:
NIRS 2
Keywords:
Development
Language
Near Infra-Red Spectroscopy (NIRS)
1|2Indicates the priority used for review
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Please indicate below if your study was a "resting state" or "task-activation” study.
Task-activation
Healthy subjects only or patients (note that patient studies may also involve healthy subjects):
Healthy subjects
Was this research conducted in the United States?
No
Were any human subjects research approved by the relevant Institutional Review Board or ethics panel?
NOTE: Any human subjects studies without IRB approval will be automatically rejected.
Yes
Were any animal research approved by the relevant IACUC or other animal research panel?
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Not applicable
Please indicate which methods were used in your research:
Optical Imaging
Other, Please specify
-
functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS)
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