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Phonological awareness predicts activation patterns for print and speech

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Abstract

Using fMRI, we explored the relationship between phonological awareness (PA), a measure of metaphonological knowledge of the segmental structure of speech, and brain activation patterns during processing of print and speech in young readers from 6 to 10 years of age. Behavioral measures of PA were positively correlated with activation levels for print relative to speech tokens in superior temporal and occipito-temporal regions. Differences between print-elicited activation levels in superior temporal and inferior frontal sites were also correlated with PA measures with the direction of the correlation depending on stimulus type: positive for pronounceable pseudowords and negative for consonant strings. These results support and extend the many indications in the behavioral and neurocognitive literature that PA is a major component of skill in beginning readers and point to a developmental trajectory by which written language engages areas originally shaped by speech for learners on the path toward successful literacy acquisition.

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Notes

  1. Our interest in including the semantic mismatch condition is to address a longitudinal question about the relative influence of semantic and phonological processes over time and is therefore not examined in the context of this report focused on data acquired at entry into the study.

  2. As shown in Tables 2 and 3, sites in STG show the same pattern of correlations. In the interest of brevity and simplicity, we selected just one of the sites for illustrating the pattern and for use in the multiple regression analyses described below.

  3. Word Attack scores (mean raw score = 17.78; SD = 6.97; range 3–30) were not obtained for one of the participants; therefore these analyses only include data from 42 of the 43 participants.

  4. Our approach was to examine the correlation between raw PA skill and functional activation. However, we did conduct multiple regression analyses with age as a predictor in order to ensure that the effects in the regions of interest we report were not accounted for or qualified by individual differences in age. We felt that this was particularly important for the analyses involving elision and blending given that studies have suggested that blending more accurately discriminates metaphonological skill in younger children, whereas and elision is a better discriminator in older children. Results of the analyses revealed no effect of age, and all of the effects for each region discussed remained significant.

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Acknowledgments

This study is supported by National Institute of Child Health and Human Development grant HD 01994 to Carol Fowler (Haskins Laboratories) and NICHD grant HD 048830 to Kenneth R. Pugh (Yale University). We thank Gina DellaPorta, Kelley Delaney, and Ashley Zennis, for behavioral assessment and Hedy Serofin and Teri Hickey for help with imaging participants.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Haskins Laboratories, 300 George Street, New Haven, CT, 06511, USA

    Stephen J. Frost, Nicole Landi, W. Einar Mencl, Rebecca Sandak, Robert K. Fulbright, Leslie Jacobsen, Elena L. Grigorenko, R. Todd Constable & Kenneth R. Pugh

  2. Department of Educational Psychology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

    Nicole Landi

  3. Department of Diagnostic Radiology, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA

    Robert K. Fulbright & R. Todd Constable

  4. Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA

    Leslie Jacobsen

  5. Yale University Child Study Center, New Haven, CT, USA

    Elena L. Grigorenko

  6. Department of Pediatrics, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA

    Eleanor T. Tejada & Kenneth R. Pugh

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  1. Stephen J. Frost
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Correspondence to Stephen J. Frost.

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Frost, S.J., Landi, N., Mencl, W.E. et al. Phonological awareness predicts activation patterns for print and speech. Ann. of Dyslexia 59, 78–97 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11881-009-0024-y

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