Abstract
Background
This study examined whether and how two groups of young adults who were poor readers
as children (a relatively compensated group and a group with persistent reading difficulties)
differed from nonimpaired readers and if there were any factors distinguishing the
compensated from persistently poor readers that might account for their different
outcomes.
Methods
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we studied three groups of young adults,
ages 18.5–22.5 years, as they read pseudowords and real words: 1) persistently poor
readers (PPR; n = 24); 2) accuracy improved (compensated) readers (AIR; n = 19); and 3) nonimpaired readers (NI, n = 27).
Results
Compensated readers, who are accurate but not fluent, demonstrate a relative underactivation
in posterior neural systems for reading located in left parietotemporal and occipitotemporal
regions. Persistently poor readers, who are both not fluent and less accurate, activate
posterior reading systems but engage them differently from nonimpaired readers, appearing
to rely more on memory-based rather than analytic word identification strategies.
Conclusions
These findings of divergent neural outcomes as young adults are both new and unexpected
and suggest a neural basis for reading outcomes of compensation and persistence in
adults with childhood dyslexia.
Keywords
To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
Purchase one-time access:
Academic & Personal: 24 hour online accessCorporate R&D Professionals: 24 hour online accessOne-time access price info
- For academic or personal research use, select 'Academic and Personal'
- For corporate R&D use, select 'Corporate R&D Professionals'
Subscribe:
Subscribe to Biological PsychiatryAlready a print subscriber? Claim online access
Already an online subscriber? Sign in
Register: Create an account
Institutional Access: Sign in to ScienceDirect
References
- Language phenotype for reading and writing disability.Scientific Studies of Reading. 2001; 5: 59-106
- Outcomes of adults with childhood histories of dyslexia.in: Hulme C. Joshi R.M. Cognitive and Linguistic Bases of Reading, Writing, and Spelling. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, New Jersey1998: 179-200
- Explicit and implicit processing of words and pseudowords by adult developmental dyslexics.Brain. 1999; 122: 1901-1917
- Phonological dyslexia and dysgraphia in a highly literate subject.Q J Exp Psychol A. 1985; 37: 435-475
- The visual word form area.Brain. 2000; 123: 291-307
- Language-specific tuning of visual cortex? Functional properties of the visual word form area.Brain. 2002; 125: 1054-1069
- fMRI auditory language differences between dyslexic and able reading children.Neuroreport. 2001; 12: 1195-1201
- The visual word form area.Neuroreport. 2002; 13: 1-5
- Cerebral mechanisms of word masking and unconscious repetition priming.Nat Neurosci. 2001; 4: 752-758
- Sur un cas de cécité verbale avec agraphie, suivi d’autopsie.C R Société du Biologie. 1891; 43: 197-201
- Contribution a l’etude anatomo-pathologique et clinique des differentes varietes de cecite verbale.Memoires de la Societe de Biologie. 1892; 4: 61-90
- Tests of Applied Literacy Skills (TALS). Educational Testing Service, Princeton, NJ1992
- Cognitive profiles of reading disability.J Educ Psychol. 1994; 86: 6-23
- The functional anatomy of episodic memory.Trends Neuroscie. 1997; 20: 213-218
- Spatial registration and moralization of images.Hum Brain Mapp. 1996; 2: 165-189
- Reading for meaning and reading for sound in autistic and dyslexic children.Br J Dev Psychol. 1983; 1: 329-342
- What constrains the organization of the ventral temporal cortex.Trends Cogn Sci. 2000; 4: 1-2
- The fusiform “face area” is part of a network that processes faces at the individual level.J Cogn Neurosci. 2000; 123: 495-504
- An examiniation of the effects of stimulus type, encoding task, and functional connectivity on the role of right prefrontal cortex in recognition memory.Neuroimage. 2001; 14: 556-571
- Dissociation of normal feature analysis and deficient processing of letter-strings in dyslexic adults.Cereb Cortex. 1999; 4: 476-483
- Functional associations among human posterior extrastriate brain regions during object and spatial vision.J Cogn Neurosci. 1992; 4: 311-322
- Functional connectivity of the angular gyrus in normal reading and dyslexia.Proc Nat Acad Sci USA. 1998; 95: 8939-8944
- Neural modeling, functional brain imaging, and cognition.Trends Cogn Sci. 1999; 3: 91-98
- Toward an instance theory of automatization.Psychol Rev. 1988; 95: 492-527
- Automaticity and reading.Reading Writing Q: Overcoming Learn Disabil. 1997; 13: 123-146
- Right anterior prefrontal cortex activation during semantic monitoring and working memory.Neuroimage. 1998; 7: 41-48
- Randomization, Bootstrap and Monte Carlo Methods in Biology. Chapman & Hall, London1997
- Spatial pattern analysis of functional brain images using partial least squares.Neuroimage. 1996; 3: 143-157
- Differential functional connectivity of prefrontal and medial temporal cortices during episodic memory retrieval.Hum Brain Mapp. 1997; 5: 323-327
- Three distinct ventral occipitotemporal regions for reading and object naming.Neuroimage. 1999; 10: 181-192
- Subtypes of reading disability.J Educ Psychol. 1998; 90: 347-373
- Individual differences in contextual facilitation.Child Dev. 1998; 69: 996-1011
- Genes, environment, and reading disabilities.in: Sternberg R. Spear-Swerling L. Perspectives on Learning Disabilities. Westview Press, Oxford1999: 3-22
- A behavioral-genetic analysis of reading disabilities and component processes.in: Klein R. McMullen P. Converging Methods for Understanding Reading and Dyslexia. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA1999: 133-153
- Dyslexia-cultural diversity and biological unity.Science. 2001; 291: 2165-2167
- Is developmental dyslexia a disconnection syndrome? Evidence from PET scanning.Brain. 1996; 119: 143-157
- The constraints functional anatomy places on cognitive models of auditory word processing.Neuroimage. 1998; 7: S168
Report of the National Reading Panel (2000): Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence Based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and its Implications for Reading Instruction. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Publication NIH No. 00–4754
- Failure to activate the left temporoparietal cortex in dyslexia.Arch Neurol. 1992; 49: 527-534
- A positron emission tomographic study of impaired word recognition and phonological processing in dyslexic men.Arch Neurol. 1997; 54: 562-573
- Discrepancy compared to low achievement definitions of reading disability.J Learn Disabil. 1992; 25: 639-648
- Disruption of posterior brain systems for reading in children with developmental dyslexia.Biol Psychiatry. 2002; 52: 101-110
- Dyslexia.Sci Am. 1996; 275: 98-104
- Current concepts.N Engl J Med. 1998; 338: 307-312
- Evidence that dyslexia may represent the lower tail of a normal distribution of reading ability.N Engl J Med. 1992; 326: 145-150
- Persistence of dyslexia.Pediatrics. 1999; 104: 1351-1359
- Prevalence of reading disability in boys and girls.JAMA. 1990; 264: 998-1002
- Functional disruption in the organization of the brain for reading in dyslexia.Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 1998; 95: 2636-2641
- Cerebral mechanisms involved in word reading in dyslexic children.Cereb Cortex. 2000; 10: 809-816
- ROC analysis of statistical methods used in functional MRI.Neuroimage. 1999; 9: 311-329
- Is preschool language impairment a risk factor for dyslexia in adolescence.J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 2000; 41: 587-600
- Coplanar Stereotaxic Atlas of the Human Brain. Three-dimensional Proportional System: An Approach to Cerebral Imaging. Thieme Medical, New York1988
- FFA.Nat Neurosci. 2000; 3: 764-769
- Disrupted neural responses to phonological and orthographic processing in dyslexic children.Neuroreport. 2001; 12: 299-307
- Intensive remedial instruction for children with severe reading disabilities.J Learn Disabil. 2001; 34: 33-58
- Differential genetic etiology of reading disability as a function of IQ.J Learn Disabil. 2000; 33: 192-199
- The nature of phonological processes and its causal role in the acquisition of reading skills.Psychol Bull. 1987; 101: 192-212
- Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised. DLM Teaching Resource, Allen, TX1981
- Gray Oral Reading Tests, 3rd ed. PRO-ED, Austin, TX1992
- Woodcock-Johnson Psycho-Educational Battery. NYT Teaching Resources, Boston1977
- Woodcock-Johnson Psycho-Educational Battery–Revised (WJ-R). Developmental Learning Materials, Allen, TX1989
Article info
Publication history
Accepted:
October 28,
2002
Received in revised form:
October 18,
2002
Received:
July 1,
2002
Identification
Copyright
© 2003 Society of Biological Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
