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The roles of maturation and experience in linguistic integration during Chinese reading comprehension
Poster Session C, Friday, October 25, 4:30 - 6:00 pm, Great Hall 3 and 4
Danni He1, Qing Cai1; 1School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, China, Shanghai
Reading comprehension involves the intricate integration of multiple linguistic levels, shaped by factors such as maturation and extensive language experience. However, the extent to which these developmental factors contribute to the neural processes underpinning linguistic integration during narrative reading comprehension remains unclear. In this study, we aim to investigate how maturation (age in months) and experience (language ability) affect the brain responses during linguistic integration. Forty-two adults (11 males) and sixty-one children (31 males, 9-11 years old) were recruited in our study. They performed the sentence and word processing tasks using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). The individual areas responsible for linguistic integration were defined based on the positive effect of the sentence versus word contrast across adults and children, including the general high-level language area and some subareas in the parietal cortex. A subset of these participants (36 adults and 47 children) also completed a natural text-reading task. During this task, the neural response was extracted to calculate the inter-subject correlation within each age group and the neural maturity was evaluated by the children-to-adults correlations in the defined integration-related areas. Additionally, Children’s verbal and non-verbal abilities were assessed using subtests from the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, Fourth Edition (WISC-IV). Other demographic information was also collected outside the scanner. Our findings revealed that verbal ability, after adjusting for gender and non-verbal abilities such as working memory, significantly predicted neural responses in the pars opercularis (IFG-Op) and the pars triangularis (IFG-Tr) of the left inferior frontal gyrus, without a corresponding effect in the right IFG. Conversely, age was a significant predictor of neural responses in the right Tri-IFG and Oper-IFG, showing increased neural maturity associated with ageing, but not in the left counterparts. Moreover, verbal ability, but not age, presented a significant positive prediction on neural maturity across extensive areas of the parietal and temporal networks. In addition, no child-unique (child-child > adult-adult) responses were observed in the areas for linguistic integration. These findings indicate that the impact of maturation and experience exhibits hemispheric differences, reflecting distinct developmental trajectories in neural processes underlying reading comprehension. Furthermore, verbal ability's effect on neural maturity transcends age-related changes, prominently influencing neural development in broad parietal and temporal regions. This highlights the critical role of experience in developing neural functions essential for reading comprehension in children.
Topic Areas: Language Development/Acquisition, Reading