Neural Signatures of the Reading-Writing Connection: Greater Involvement of Writing in Chinese Reading than English Reading

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 11; no. 12; p. e0168414
• Main Authors: Cao, Fan, Perfetti, Charles A
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 16.12.2016; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Adult; Biology and Life Sciences; Brain Mapping - methods; Brain research; Chinese languages; Cognitive linguistics; Comparative linguistics; Female; Frontal gyrus; Handwriting; Humans; Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; Language; Learning; Linguistic relativity; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Male; Medicine and Health Sciences; Meta-analysis; Multilingualism; Neural networks; Neural Pathways - physiology; NMR; Nuclear magnetic resonance; Orthography; Phonetics; Phonology; Physical Sciences; Prefrontal Cortex - physiology; R&D; Reading; Reading acquisition; Reading-writing relationship; Research & development; Research and Analysis Methods; Second language writing; Semantics; Social Sciences; Studies; Writing; Writing tests; Young Adult; United States; United States > US
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0168414

Research on cross-linguistic comparisons of the neural correlates of reading has consistently found that the left middle frontal gyrus (MFG) is more involved in Chinese than in English. However, there is a lack of consensus on the interpretation of the language difference. Because this region has been found to be involved in writing, we hypothesize that reading Chinese characters involves this writing region to a greater degree because Chinese speakers learn to read by repeatedly writing the characters. To test this hypothesis, we recruited English L1 learners of Chinese, who performed a reading task and a writing task in each language. The English L1 sample had learned some Chinese characters through character-writing and others through phonological learning, allowing a test of writing-on-reading effect. We found that the left MFG was more activated in Chinese than English regardless of task, and more activated in writing than in reading regardless of language. Furthermore, we found that this region was more activated for reading Chinese characters learned by character-writing than those learned by phonological learning. A major conclusion is that writing regions are also activated in reading, and that this reading-writing connection is modulated by the learning experience. We replicated the main findings in a group of native Chinese speakers, which excluded the possibility that the language differences observed in the English L1 participants were due to different language proficiency level.