Brain activity patterns of phonemic representations are atypical in beginning readers with family risk for dyslexia
Date
2020Author
Vandermosten, Maaike
Correia, João M.
Vanderauwera, Jolijn
Wouters, Jan
Bonte, Milene
Metadata
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Vandermosten, M, Correia, J, Vanderauwera, J, Wouters, J, Ghesquière, P, Bonte, M. Brain activity patterns of phonemic representations are atypical in beginning readers with family risk for dyslexia. Dev Sci. 2020; 23:e12857. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12857
Abstract
There is an ongoing debate whether phonological deficits in dyslexics should be attributed
to (a) less specified representations of speech sounds, like suggested by
studies in young children with a familial risk for dyslexia, or (b) to an impaired access
to these phonemic representations, as suggested by studies in adults with dyslexia.
These conflicting findings are rooted in between study differences in sample characteristics
and/or testing techniques. The current study uses the same multivariate
functional MRI (fMRI) approach as previously used in adults with dyslexia to investigate
phonemic representations in 30 beginning readers with a familial risk and 24
beginning readers without a familial risk of dyslexia, of whom 20 were later retrospectively
classified as dyslexic. Based on fMRI response patterns evoked by listening
to different utterances of /bA/ and /dA/ sounds, multivoxel analyses indicate
that the underlying activation patterns of the two phonemes were distinct in children
with a low family risk but not in children with high family risk. However, no group differences
were observed between children that were later classified as typical versus
dyslexic readers, regardless of their family risk status, indicating that poor phonemic
representations constitute a risk for dyslexia but are not sufficient to result in reading
problems. We hypothesize that poor phonemic representations are trait (family risk)
and not state (dyslexia) dependent, and that representational deficits only lead to
reading difficulties when they are present in conjunction with other neuroanatomical
or—functional deficits.