Children With Reading Difficulty Rely on Unimodal Neural Processing for Phonemic Awareness

• Published in: Frontiers in human neuroscience Vol. 13; p. 390
• Main Authors: Randazzo, Melissa, Greenspon, Emma B, Booth, James R, McNorgan, Chris
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland Frontiers Research Foundation 14-11-2019; Frontiers Media S.A
• Subjects: audiovisual integration; Brain; Brain mapping; Children; crossmodal integration; Dyslexia; fMRI—functional magnetic resonance imaging; Functional magnetic resonance imaging; Human Neuroscience; Information processing; Judgment; Lexical processing; Literacy; Neuroimaging; Orthography; Phonemes; phonemic awareness; Phonics; Phonological awareness; Phonological processing; Phonology; Psychology; Reading comprehension; reading difficulty; Reading instruction; Rhyme; Sensory integration; Skills; Sound; Studies; United States > US; reading difficulty; phonemic awareness; crossmodal integration; audiovisual integration; fMRI—functional magnetic resonance imaging; dyslexia
• ISSN: 1662-5161; 1662-5161
• DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2019.00390

Phonological awareness skills in children with reading difficulty (RD) may reflect impaired automatic integration of orthographic and phonological representations. However, little is known about the underlying neural mechanisms involved in phonological awareness for children with RD. Eighteen children with RD, ages 9-13, participated in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study designed to assess the relationship of two constructs of phonological awareness, phoneme synthesis, and phoneme analysis, with crossmodal rhyme judgment. Participants completed a rhyme judgment task presented in two modality conditions; unimodal auditory only and crossmodal audiovisual. Measures of phonological awareness were correlated with unimodal, but not crossmodal, lexical processing. Moreover, these relationships were found only in unisensory brain regions, and not in multisensory brain areas. The results of this study suggest that children with RD rely on unimodal representations and unisensory brain areas, and provide insight into the role of phonemic awareness in mapping between auditory and visual modalities during literacy acquisition.