Reduced pattern similarity in brain activation during orthographic processing in children with developmental dyslexia

Neural bases of reading fluency: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Reading fluency, the ability to read quickly and accurately, is a critical marker of successful reading and is notoriously difficult to improve in reading disabled populations. Despite its importance to functional literacy, fluency is a relatively under-studied aspect of reading, and the neural correlates of reading fluency are not well understood. Here, we review the literature of the neural correlates of reading fluency as well as rapid automatized naming (RAN), a task that is robustly related to reading fluency. In a qualitative review of the neuroimaging literature, we evaluated structural and functional MRI studies of reading fluency in readers from a range of skill levels. This was followed by a quantitative activation likelihood estimate (ALE) meta-analysis of fMRI studies of reading speed and RAN measures. We anticipated that reading speed, relative to untimed reading and reading-related tasks, would harness ventral reading pathways that are thought to enable the fast, visual recognition of words. The qualitative review showed that speeded reading taps the entire canonical reading network. The meta-analysis indicated a stronger role of the ventral reading pathway in rapid reading and rapid naming. Both reviews identified regions outside the canonical reading network that contribute to reading fluency, such as the bilateral insula and superior parietal lobule. We suggest that fluent reading engages both domain-specific reading pathways as well as domain-general regions that support overall task performance and discuss future avenues of research to expand our understanding of the neural bases of fluent reading.

Twice-exceptionality unmasked: A systematic narrative review of the literature on identifying dyslexia in the gifted child

In this systematic narrative review, we synthesised the small existing body of research on children who are gifted and dyslexic (G-D) in order to investigate the claim that G-D students have a unique profile, characterised by well-masked word-level reading and spelling difficulties. Our focus was on both the cognitive and academic profiles of this subgroup of twice-exceptional (2e) children and the assessment protocols used to identify them. Findings suggest that despite having processing deficits associated with dyslexia, G-D students' gifted strengths, especially those relating to oral language, may enable them to compensate for their reading difficulties, at least to an extent that they fail to meet standard diagnostic criteria. However, G-D students also perform poorly on word-level reading, reading fluency and spelling tasks when compared with both control groups and their gifted, non-dyslexic peers, providing clear evidence of impaired achievement. Findings from this review highlight the need for (a) a more nuanced approach to the assessment of students presenting with highly discrepant profiles and (b) future research into both the cognitive and academic profiles and the instructional needs of this highly able yet poorly understood group of students, whose potential may be masked and thus underestimated in the school setting.