"Developmental dyslexia has been associated with a dysfunction of a brain region in the left inferior occipitotemporal cortex, called the “visual word-form area” (VWFA)."
" ... a gradient of print specificity (higher anterior activity to letter strings but higher posterior activity to false-fonts) as well as a constant sensitivity to orthographic familiarity (higher activity for unfamiliar than familiar word-forms) along the VWF-system could only be detected in controls. In conclusion, analyzing responses and specialization profiles along the left VWF-system reveals that children with dyslexia show impaired specialization for both print and orthography." https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.05.021
Got to "Writing emerged . . . about six thousand years ago and was adopted by some societies only within the past century"
Surely there are comparative studies of reading speed or reading comprehension between different societies/ethnicities?
That reading skill is derived from facial recognition brain processes rather than verbal ability is an interesting point. I presume this also apploes to the recognition of pictographic writing systems?
If Chinese and alphabetic scripts are processed differently by the brain, would Japanese which utilizes both Chinese characters and two syllabaries fall somewhere in between? Lastly are all alphabetic scripts whether Latin, Arabic, Cyrillic processed the exact same way?
Almost all MRI studies of the VWFA have involved native-speakers of Mandarin Chinese (ideographic script) or English, German, Swiss German, or Italian (alphabetic scripts).
There is, however, an interesting MRI study from Japan. It found that Japanese participants "show higher activation for Kanji than Hiragana words, although this was not due to their inherent differences in visual complexity."
Is this because the Japanese have coevolved to a greater extent with Kanji than with Hiragana? Kanji is older and was long preferred by the elites and the educated. Indeed, the authors of this study suggest that "it is theoretically possible that this is due to language-specific neuronal responses. A more parsimonious explanation, however, is that Hanji characters increase visuospatial working memory demands relative to letters."
So self identified people with “dyslexia” must have a debilitated VWFA compared to the mean population or less aspm variants in their genome.
"Developmental dyslexia has been associated with a dysfunction of a brain region in the left inferior occipitotemporal cortex, called the “visual word-form area” (VWFA)."
" ... a gradient of print specificity (higher anterior activity to letter strings but higher posterior activity to false-fonts) as well as a constant sensitivity to orthographic familiarity (higher activity for unfamiliar than familiar word-forms) along the VWF-system could only be detected in controls. In conclusion, analyzing responses and specialization profiles along the left VWF-system reveals that children with dyslexia show impaired specialization for both print and orthography." https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.05.021
Got to "Writing emerged . . . about six thousand years ago and was adopted by some societies only within the past century"
Surely there are comparative studies of reading speed or reading comprehension between different societies/ethnicities?
That reading skill is derived from facial recognition brain processes rather than verbal ability is an interesting point. I presume this also apploes to the recognition of pictographic writing systems?
Yes, but those studies are necessarily based on biased samples, i.e., people who can read and write in that particular society.
If Chinese and alphabetic scripts are processed differently by the brain, would Japanese which utilizes both Chinese characters and two syllabaries fall somewhere in between? Lastly are all alphabetic scripts whether Latin, Arabic, Cyrillic processed the exact same way?
Almost all MRI studies of the VWFA have involved native-speakers of Mandarin Chinese (ideographic script) or English, German, Swiss German, or Italian (alphabetic scripts).
There is, however, an interesting MRI study from Japan. It found that Japanese participants "show higher activation for Kanji than Hiragana words, although this was not due to their inherent differences in visual complexity."
Is this because the Japanese have coevolved to a greater extent with Kanji than with Hiragana? Kanji is older and was long preferred by the elites and the educated. Indeed, the authors of this study suggest that "it is theoretically possible that this is due to language-specific neuronal responses. A more parsimonious explanation, however, is that Hanji characters increase visuospatial working memory demands relative to letters."
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2012.02.003