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Reading without words or target detection? A re-analysis and replication fMRI study of the Landolt paradigm

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Abstract

The Landolt paradigm is a visual scanning task intended to evoke reading-like eye-movements in the absence of orthographic or lexical information, thus allowing the dissociation of (sub-) lexical vs. visual processing. To that end, all letters in real word sentences are exchanged for closed Landolt rings, with 0, 1, or 2 open Landolt rings as targets in each Landolt sentence. A preliminary fMRI block-design study (Hillen et al. in Front Hum Neurosci 7:1–14, 2013) demonstrated that the Landolt paradigm has a special neural signature, recruiting the right IPS and SPL as part of the endogenous attention network. However, in that analysis, the brain responses to target detection could not be separated from those involved in processing Landolt stimuli without targets. The present study presents two fMRI experiments testing the question whether targets or the Landolt stimuli per se, led to the right IPS/SPL activation. Experiment 1 was an event-related re-analysis of the Hillen et al. (Front Hum Neurosci 7:1–14, 2013) data. Experiment 2 was a replication study with a new sample and identical procedures. In both experiments, the right IPS/SPL were recruited in the Landolt condition as compared to orthographic stimuli even in the absence of any target in the stimulus, indicating that the properties of the Landolt task itself trigger this right parietal activation. These findings are discussed against the background of behavioural and neuroimaging studies of healthy reading as well as developmental and acquired dyslexia. Consequently, this neuroimaging evidence might encourage the use of the Landolt paradigm also in the context of examining reading disorders, as it taps into the orientation of visual attention during reading-like scanning of stimuli without interfering sub-lexical information.

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Notes

  1. Note that, with an average of 78% correct trials (cf. Results), there were around 32 valid trials per condition from which the HRF could be estimated.

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Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the National German Research Agency (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) Grant GU-1177/1-1. We wish to thank Ralph Weidner for his insightful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.

Funding

This research was funded by the National German Research Agency (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) Grant GU-1177/1-1 to TG and SH.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, Medical Faculty, RWTH Aachen University, Pauwelsstrasse 30, 52074, Aachen, Germany

    Stefan Heim, Franziska von Tongeln & Rebekka Hillen

  2. AG Neuroanatomy of Language, Research Centre Jülich, Institute for Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-1), Forschungszentrum Jülich, Leo-Brandt-Straße 5, 52428, Jülich, Germany

    Stefan Heim & Franziska von Tongeln

  3. Department of Neurology, Medical Faculty, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

    Franziska von Tongeln

  4. Child Neuropsychology Section, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, Medical School, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

    Josefine Horbach & Thomas Günther

  5. Bergische Universität Wuppertal, Wuppertal, Germany

    Ralph Radach

  6. Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA

    Ralph Radach

  7. Faculty of Health, Zuyd University, Heerlen, The Netherlands

    Thomas Günther

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  1. Stefan Heim
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  2. Franziska von Tongeln
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  4. Josefine Horbach
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Correspondence to Stefan Heim.

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The author declares that there is no competing interest.

Research involving human participants

This study was conducted on healthy human volunteers in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.

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Ethical approval was obtained from the Ethics Committee at the Medical Faculty of RWTH Aachen University.

Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 9 and 10.

Table 9 Results of the pair-wise t tests for Experiment 1
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Table 10 Results of the pair-wise t tests for Experiment 2
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Heim, S., von Tongeln, F., Hillen, R. et al. Reading without words or target detection? A re-analysis and replication fMRI study of the Landolt paradigm. Brain Struct Funct 223, 3447–3461 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00429-018-1698-x

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