Publication year
2014Author(s)
Number of pages
16 p.
Source
Neuropsychologia, 61, (2014), pp. 299-314ISSN
Publication type
Article / Letter to editor

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Organization
SW OZ BSI OLO
PI Group Neurobiology of Language
SW OZ DCC PL
Journal title
Neuropsychologia
Volume
vol. 61
Languages used
English (eng)
Page start
p. 299
Page end
p. 314
Subject
110 000 Neurocognition of Language; 110 007 PLUS: A neurocomputational model for the Processing of Linguistic Utterances based on the Unification-Space architecture; 110 009 The human brain and Chinese prosody; 110 012 Social cognition of verbal communication; 110 013 Binding and the MUC-model; 110 014 Public activities; DI-BCB_DCC_Theme 1: Language and Communication; Learning and Plasticity; PsycholinguisticsAbstract
To investigate the neural underpinnings of word decoding, and how it changes as a function of repeated exposure, we trained Dutch participants repeatedly over the course of a month of training to articulate a set of novel disyllabic input strings written in Greek script to avoid the use of familiar orthographic representations. The syllables in the input were phonotactically legal combinations but non-existent in the Dutch language, allowing us to assess their role in novel word decoding. Not only trained disyllabic pseudowords were tested but also pseudowords with recombined patterns of syllables to uncover the emergence of syllabic representations. We showed that with extensive training, articulation became faster and more accurate for the trained pseudowords. On the neural level, the initial stage of decoding was reflected by increased activity in visual attention areas of occipito-temporal and occipito-parietal cortices, and in motor coordination areas of the precentral gyrus and the inferior frontal gyrus. After one month of training, memory representations for holistic information (whole word unit) were established in areas encompassing the angular gyrus, the precuneus and the middle temporal gyrus. Syllabic representations also emerged through repeated training of disyllabic pseudowords, such that reading recombined syllables of the trained pseudowords showed similar brain activation to trained pseudowords and were articulated faster than novel combinations of letter strings used in the trained pseudowords.
This item appears in the following Collection(s)
- Academic publications [227864]
- Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging [3567]
- Faculty of Social Sciences [28468]
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