Abstract
In this chapter, we will present findings speaking for the position that VWFA is not limited to short “legal” letter strings (as assumed by the proponents of the original VWFA hypothesis). Rather, it serves as neural equivalent of the orthographic word lexicon of cognitive dual-route models of reading aloud and spelling. In support of this we found VWFA activation to exhibit an orthographic familiarity effect (Kronbichler et al., NeuroImage 21(3):946–953, 2004; J Cogn Neurosci 19(10):1584–1594, 2007; J Cogn Neurosci 21(2):222–229, 2009), a familiarity by length interaction effect (Schurz et al., NeuroImage 49(3):2649–2661, 2010) and, recently, a capitalization familiarity effect (Wimmer et al., Psych Sciene, 27(9): 1240–1248, 2016). Also in accordance with the orthographic lexicon view, in recent spelling-based studies we found the VWFA to be responsive to auditory words in orthographic decision tasks (Ludersdorfer et al., Hum Brain Mapp 36(4):1393–1406, 2015; NeuroImage 124(Pt A):834–842, 2016).
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Acknowledgements
The research reported in this paper was supported by grants from the Austrian Science Foundation to Heinz Wimmer (P914494-SPR, P18832-B02). Philipp Ludersdorfer was supported by the Doctoral College “Imaging the Mind” of the Austrian Science Foundation (FWF- W1233).
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Wimmer, H., Ludersdorfer, P. (2018). Searching for the Orthographic Lexicon in the Visual Word Form Area. In: Lachmann, T., Weis, T. (eds) Reading and Dyslexia. Literacy Studies, vol 16. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90805-2_3
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