Greater utilization of executive functions networks when listening to stories with visual stimulation is related to lower reading abilities in children

Narrative comprehension relies on basic sensory processing abilities, such as visual and auditory processing, with recent evidence for utilizing executive functions (EF), which are also engaged during reading. EF was previously related to the "supporter" of engaging the auditory and visual modalities in different cognitive tasks, with evidence of lower efficiency in this process among those with reading difficulties in the absence of a visual stimulus (i.e. while listening to stories). The current study aims to fill out the gap related to the level of reliance on these neural circuits while visual aids (pictures) are involved during story listening in relation to reading skills. Functional MRI data were collected from 44 Hebrew-speaking children aged 8-12 years while listening to stories with vs without visual stimuli (i.e., pictures). Functional connectivity of networks supporting reading was defined in each condition and compared between the conditions against behavioral reading measures. Lower reading skills were related to greater functional connectivity values between EF networks (default mode and memory networks), and between the auditory and memory networks for the stories with vs without the visual stimulation. A greater difference in functional connectivity between the conditions was related to lower reading scores. We conclude that lower reading skills in children may be related to a need for greater scaffolding, i.e., visual stimulation such as pictures describing the narratives when listening to stories, which may guide future intervention approaches.

Narrative Understanding as a Means of Understanding the Other: A Review of Andrea Smorti's Book Telling to Understand

In this review I propose to discuss the contribution that Smorti's book makes to the study of autobiographical memory, since it examines the benefits that narratives provide to understanding human experience and the ability they offer in discovering and representing uncertainty. Andrea Smorti has long been engaged in the study of memory, autobiography, storytelling and psychology, as evidenced by his numerous studies mentioned in the book. Furthermore, in exploring the more purely psychological aspects of narratives, Smorti investigates the benefits that narratives offer to individual psychological well-being. Firstly published in Italian in 2018, Andrea Smorti's (2021) "Telling to Understand" is now available for the first time to the English-speaking public.

Construction or updating? Event model processes during visual narrative comprehension

The plot of a narrative is represented in the form of event models in working memory. Because only parts of the plot are actually presented and information is continually changing, comprehenders have to infer a good portion of a narrative and keep their mental representation updated. Research has identified two related processes (e.g., Gernsbacher, 1997): During model construction (shifting, laying a foundation) at large coherence breaks an event model is completely built anew. During model updating (mapping) at smaller omissions, however, the current event model is preserved, and only changed parts are updated through inference processes. Thus far, reliably distinguishing those two processes in visual narratives like comics was difficult. We report a study (N = 80) that aimed to map the differences between constructing and updating event models in visual narratives by combining measures from narrative comprehension and event cognition research and manipulating event structure. Participants watched short visual narratives designed to (not) contain event boundaries at larger coherence breaks and elicit inferences through small omissions, while we collected viewing time measures as well as event segmentation and comprehensibility data. Viewing time, segmentation, and comprehensibility data were in line with the assumption of two distinct comprehension processes. We thus found converging evidence across multiple measures for distinct model construction and updating processes in visual narratives.

The words that little by little revealed everything: Neural response to lexical-semantic content during narrative comprehension

The ease with which narratives are understood belies the complexity of the information being conveyed and the cognitive processes that support comprehension. The meanings of the words must be rapidly accessed and integrated with the reader's mental representation of the overarching, unfolding scenario. A broad, bilateral brain network is engaged by this process, but it is not clear how words that vary on specific semantic dimensions, such as ambiguity, emotion, or socialness, engage the semantic, semantic control, or social cognition systems. In the present study, data from 48 participants who listened to The Little Prince audiobook during MRI scanning were selected from the Le Petit Prince dataset. The lexical and semantic content within the narrative was quantified from the transcript words with factor scores capturing Word Length, Semantic Flexibility, Emotional Strength, and Social Impact. These scores, along with word quantity variables, were used to investigate where these predictors co-vary with activation across the brain. In contrast to studies of isolated word processing, large networks were found to co-vary with the lexical and semantic content within the narrative. An increase in semantic content engaged the ventral portion of ventrolateral ATL, consistent with its role as a semantic hub. Decreased semantic content engaged temporal pole and inferior parietal lobule, which may reflect semantic integration. The semantic control network was engaged by words with low Semantic Flexibility, perhaps due to the demand required to process infrequent, less semantically diverse language. Activation in ATL co-varied with an increase in Social Impact, which is consistent with the claim that social knowledge is housed within the neural architecture of the semantic system. These results suggest that current models of language processing may present an impoverished estimate of the neural systems that coordinate to support narrative comprehension, and, by extension, real-world language processing.

Late dominance of the right hemisphere during narrative comprehension

PET and fMRI studies suggest that auditory narrative comprehension is supported by a bilateral multilobar cortical network. The superior temporal resolution of magnetoencephalography (MEG) makes it an attractive tool to investigate the dynamics of how different neuroanatomic substrates engage during narrative comprehension. Using beta-band power changes as a marker of cortical engagement, we studied MEG responses during an auditory story comprehension task in 31 healthy adults. The protocol consisted of two runs, each interleaving 7 blocks of the story comprehension task with 15 blocks of an auditorily presented math task as a control for phonological processing, working memory, and attention processes. Sources at the cortical surface were estimated with a frequency-resolved beamformer. Beta-band power was estimated in the frequency range of 16-24 Hz over 1-sec epochs starting from 400 msec after stimulus onset until the end of a story or math problem presentation. These power estimates were compared to 1-second epochs of data before the stimulus block onset. The task-related cortical engagement was inferred from beta-band power decrements. Group-level source activations were statistically compared using non-parametric permutation testing. A story-math contrast of beta-band power changes showed greater bilateral cortical engagement within the fusiform gyrus, inferior and middle temporal gyri, parahippocampal gyrus, and left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) during story comprehension. A math-story contrast of beta power decrements showed greater bilateral but left-lateralized engagement of the middle frontal gyrus and superior parietal lobule. The evolution of cortical engagement during five temporal windows across the presentation of stories showed significant involvement during the first interval of the narrative of bilateral opercular and insular regions as well as the ventral and lateral temporal cortex, extending more posteriorly on the left and medially on the right. Over time, there continued to be sustained right anterior ventral temporal engagement, with increasing involvement of the right anterior parahippocampal gyrus, STG, MTG, posterior superior temporal sulcus, inferior parietal lobule, frontal operculum, and insula, while left hemisphere engagement decreased. Our findings are consistent with prior imaging studies of narrative comprehension, but in addition, they demonstrate increasing right-lateralized engagement over the course of narratives, suggesting an important role for these right-hemispheric regions in semantic integration as well as social and pragmatic inference processing.

Narrative Comprehension Guides Eye Movements in the Absence of Motion

Viewers' attentional selection while looking at scenes is affected by both top-down and bottom-up factors. However, when watching film, viewers typically attend to the movie similarly irrespective of top-down factors-a phenomenon we call the tyranny of film. A key difference between still pictures and film is that film contains motion, which is a strong attractor of attention and highly predictive of gaze during film viewing. The goal of the present study was to test if the tyranny of film is driven by motion. To do this, we created a slideshow presentation of the opening scene of Touch of Evil. Context condition participants watched the full slideshow. No-context condition participants did not see the opening portion of the scene, which showed someone placing a time bomb into the trunk of a car. In prior research, we showed that despite producing very different understandings of the clip, this manipulation did not affect viewers' attention (i.e., the tyranny of film), as both context and no-context participants were equally likely to fixate on the car with the bomb when the scene was presented as a film. The current study found that when the scene was shown as a slideshow, the context manipulation produced differences in attentional selection (i.e., it attenuated attentional synchrony). We discuss these results in the context of the Scene Perception and Event Comprehension Theory, which specifies the relationship between event comprehension and attentional selection in the context of visual narratives.

Narrative comprehension and production abilities of children with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome

BACKGROUND

The 22q11.2 Deletion Syndrome (22q11DS) is associated with language deficits and weak intellectual functioning. In other clinical groups, linguistic and cognitive difficulties have been associated with impaired acquisition of narrative abilities. However, little is known about the narrative abilities of children with 22q11DS.

AIMS

To describe the ability of children with 22q11DS to produce and comprehend narrative macrostructure. Additionally, to examine the role of intellectual functioning in explaining their narrative difficulties.

METHODS AND PROCEDURES

Narrative skills of 14 school-aged children with 22q11DS were compared to those of younger typically developing (TD) children matched on mental age and same-aged peers with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD).

OUTCOMES AND RESULTS

Children with 22q11DS had significantly lower scores on narrative comprehension than younger TD children. No significant differences emerged on narrative production. Children with 22q11DS and children with DLD did not differ significantly on any of the narrative measures.

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

Narrative comprehension in children with 22q11DS seems more affected than production. Narrative comprehension difficulties cannot be entirely explained by a low level of intellectual functioning. Narrative comprehension and production abilities in 22q11DS require further consideration.

Lending a hand to storytelling: Gesture's effects on narrative comprehension moderated by task difficulty and cognitive ability

Compelling evidence suggests observing iconic gestures benefits learning. While emerging evidence suggests typical iconic gestures benefit comprehension to a greater extent than atypical iconic gestures, it is unclear precisely when and for whom these gestures will be most helpful. The current study investigated factors that may moderate when and for whom gesture benefits narrative comprehension most, including the type of gesture, task difficulty, and individual differences in cognitive ability. Participants were shown a video narrative in which they observed either typical gestures (commonly produced gestures, highly semantically related to accompanying speech), atypical gestures (gestures that are seldom produced), or no gestures. The video narrative was either viewed with interference (background noise to increase task difficulty) or no interference (no background noise). To determine whether the effects of gesture observation and externally imposed task difficulty on narrative comprehension further depend on an individual's cognitive abilities, participants completed four measures of cognitive abilities (immediate and delayed non-verbal memory, attention, and intellectual ability). Observing typical gestures significantly benefitted narrative comprehension compared with atypical and no gestures combined, which did not differ significantly. Participants with below average and average levels of delayed non-verbal memory benefitted more from typical gestures than atypical or no gestures compared with those with an above average level of delayed non-verbal memory. However, this interaction was only significant when the task was difficult (i.e., with interference) but not when the task was simple (i.e., no interference). This finding suggests that the type of iconic gesture observed may affect gesture's beneficial effect on narrative comprehension, and that such gestures may be more beneficial in difficult tasks, but only for certain individuals.

Semantics-weighted lexical surprisal modeling of naturalistic functional MRI time-series during spoken narrative listening

Probabilistic language models are increasingly used to provide neural representations of linguistic features under naturalistic settings. Word surprisal models can be applied to continuous fMRI recordings during task-free listening of narratives, to detect regions linked to language prediction and comprehension. Here, to this purpose, a novel semantics-weighted lexical surprisal is applied to naturalistic fMRI data. FMRI was performed at 3 Tesla in 31 subjects during task-free listening to a 12-minute audiobook played in both original and word-reversed (control) version. Lexical-only and semantics-weighted lexical surprisal models were estimated for the original and control word series. The two series were alternatively chosen to build the predictor of interest in the first-level general linear model and were compared in the second-level (group) analysis. The addition of the surprisal predictor to the stimulus-related predictors significantly improved the fitting of the neural signal. In average, the semantics-weighted model yielded lower surprisal values and, in some areas, better fitting of the fMRI data compared to the lexical-only model. The two models produced both overlapping and distinct activations: while lexical-only surprisal activated secondary auditory areas in the superior temporal gyri and the cerebellum, semantics-weighted surprisal additionally activated the left inferior frontal gyrus. These results confirm the usefulness of surprisal models in the naturalistic fMRI analysis of linguistic processes and suggest that the use of semantic information may increase the sensitivity of a probabilistic language model in higher-order language-related areas, with possible implications for future naturalistic fMRI studies of language under normal and (clinically or pharmacologically) modified conditions.

An investigation of visual narrative comprehension in children with autism spectrum disorders

The present study analyzed the comprehension of visual narrative in a group of twelve children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Their performances were compared to a control group of fifteen children with typical development (TD) matched for age, level of formal education, and IQ. Visual narrative comprehension was assessed by administering a task that required children to understand narrative's global coherence by arranging in the correct order the constituent parts of stories presented in pictures. Specifically, the task evaluated children's ability to grasp how single events connected (causally and temporally) each other and how these connections led to the ending of the story. Results showed that children with ASD obtained significantly lower scores than children with TD. These results open to alternative interpretations of narrative impairments often reported in individuals with ASD, which might not be restricted to the linguistic code but stem from a deeper deficit in narrative processing that is independent from the expressive modality.

Maternal depression is associated with altered functional connectivity between neural circuits related to visual, auditory, and cognitive processing during stories listening in preschoolers

BACKGROUND

Maternal depression can influence the early activity of a mother reading stories to a young child, as depressed mothers are less likely to read to their children. Here, maternal depression association to neurobiological circuitry of narrative comprehension, visualization, and executive functions during stories listening was examined in 21 4-year-old girls and their mothers. Maternal depression scores were collected from the mothers, and functional MRI during stories listening was collected from the children.

RESULTS

Increased maternal depression was related to decreased functional connectivity between visualization and auditory regions and increased connectivity between the right visual cortex and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in the children.

CONCLUSIONS

This study highlights the need to monitor maternal depression and provide interventions to ensure positive linguistic outcomes in children.

Narrative comprehension and engagement with e-books vs. paper-books in autism spectrum condition

BACKGROUND AND AIMS

Children with autism spectrum condition often have specific difficulties with narrative comprehension, a skill which has a strong association with both concurrent and longitudinal reading comprehension. A better understanding of narrative comprehension skills in autism spectrum condition has the potential to provide insight into potential later reading comprehension difficulties and inform early targeted intervention. In the current study, the main objective was to investigate how differences in the medium of story presentation (paper-book vs. e-book) and differences in story narration (adult narration vs. in-app narration) would influence narrative comprehension in general, and between groups (autism spectrum condition and a receptive language-matched control group). We were also interested in how task engagement (visual attention and communication) differed between group and conditions and whether task engagement was related to narrative comprehension.

METHOD

Forty-two children with autism spectrum condition and 42 typically developing children were read a story either via a paper-book or an e-book with interactive and multimedia features. The e-book was either narrated by the experimenter (adult narrated iPad condition) or narrated by an in-app voiceover (e-book narrated iPad condition). Children's behaviour during storybook reading was video recorded and coded for engagement (visual attention and communication). They then completed two measures of narrative comprehension: multiple-choice questions (measuring recall of literal information) and a picture ordering task (measuring global story structure).

RESULTS

Contrary to predictions, we did not find any significant group or condition differences on either measure of narrative comprehension, and both groups demonstrated a similar level of narrative comprehension across the three conditions. We found differences in engagement between conditions for both groups, with greater visual attention in the e-book conditions compared to the paper-book condition. However, visual attention only significantly correlated with narrative comprehension for the typically developing group.

CONCLUSION

Overall, this study suggests that children with autism spectrum condition are just as able as language-matched peers to comprehend a narrative from storybooks. Presenting a story on an iPad e-book compared to a paper-book does not influence narrative comprehension, nor does adult narration of the story compared to in-app narration. However, on-task engagement is linked to narrative comprehension in typically developing children.Implications: Taken together, our findings suggest that e-books may be more successful than paper-based mediums at encouraging visual attention towards the story, but no better at supporting narrative comprehension and eliciting communication.

The Scene Perception & Event Comprehension Theory (SPECT) Applied to Visual Narratives

Understanding how people comprehend visual narratives (including picture stories, comics, and film) requires the combination of traditionally separate theories that span the initial sensory and perceptual processing of complex visual scenes, the perception of events over time, and comprehension of narratives. Existing piecemeal approaches fail to capture the interplay between these levels of processing. Here, we propose the Scene Perception & Event Comprehension Theory (SPECT), as applied to visual narratives, which distinguishes between front‐end and back‐end cognitive processes. Front‐end processes occur during single eye fixations and are comprised of attentional selection and information extraction. Back‐end processes occur across multiple fixations and support the construction of event models, which reflect understanding of what is happening now in a narrative (stored in working memory) and over the course of the entire narrative (stored in long‐term episodic memory). We describe relationships between front‐ and back‐end processes, and medium‐specific differences that likely produce variation in front‐end and back‐end processes across media (e.g., picture stories vs. film). We describe several novel research questions derived from SPECT that we have explored. By addressing these questions, we provide greater insight into how attention, information extraction, and event model processes are dynamically coordinated to perceive and understand complex naturalistic visual events in narratives and the real world.

Comprehension of visual narratives like comics, picture stories, and films involves both decoding the visual content and construing the meaningful events they represent. The Scene Perception & Event Comprehension Theory (SPECT) proposes a framework for understanding how a comprehender perceptually negotiates the surface of a visual representation and integrates its meaning into a growing mental model.

Understanding Moment-to-Moment Processing of Visual Narratives

What role do moment‐to‐moment comprehension processes play in visual attentional selection in picture stories? The current work uniquely tested the role of bridging inference generation processes on eye movements while participants viewed picture stories. Specific components of the Scene Perception and Event Comprehension Theory (SPECT) were tested. Bridging inference generation was induced by manipulating the presence of highly inferable actions embedded in picture stories. When inferable actions are missing, participants have increased viewing times for the immediately following critical image (Magliano, Larson, Higgs, & Loschky, 2016). This study used eye‐tracking to test competing hypotheses about the increased viewing time: (a) Computational Load: inference generation processes increase overall computational load, producing longer fixation durations; (b) Visual Search: inference generation processes guide eye‐movements to pick up inference‐relevant information, producing more fixations. Participants had similar fixation durations, but they made more fixations while generating inferences, with that process starting from the fifth fixation. A follow‐up hypothesis predicted that when generating inferences, participants fixate scene regions important for generating the inference. A separate group of participants rated the inferential‐relevance of regions in the critical images, and results showed that these inferentially relevant regions predicted differences in other viewers’ eye movements. Thus, viewers’ event models in working memory affect visual attentional selection while viewing visual narratives.

Visual and linguistic narrative comprehension in autism spectrum disorders: Neural evidence for modality-independent impairments

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have notable language difficulties, including with understanding narratives. However, most narrative comprehension studies have used written or spoken narratives, making it unclear whether narrative difficulties stem from language impairments or more global impairments in the kinds of general cognitive processes (such as understanding meaning and structural sequencing) that are involved in narrative comprehension. Using event-related potentials (ERPs), we directly compared semantic comprehension of linguistic narratives (short sentences) and visual narratives (comic panels) in adults with ASD and typically-developing (TD) adults. Compared to the TD group, the ASD group showed reduced N400 effects for both linguistic and visual narratives, suggesting comprehension impairments for both types of narratives and thereby implicating a more domain-general impairment. Based on these results, we propose that individuals with ASD use a more bottom-up style of processing during narrative comprehension.

Donald Duck's garden: The effects of observing iconic reinforcing and contradictory gestures on narrative comprehension

Both speech and gesture play a vital role in human communication. Gesture itself provides an external support to a spoken message. As a consequence, when presented together with speech, gesture has the ability to benefit learning across a variety of tasks, including narrative comprehension. However, the exact mechanisms underlying how the observation of gestures benefits learning are yet to be well understood and cannot be understood without further investigation into the types of gesture that benefit learning. Specifically, gestures themselves are not a homogeneous set, with different kinds of gestures having varying effects on learning. In the current study, we examined the effects of observing iconic gestures that either reinforce (i.e., reinforcing gestures) or contradict (i.e., contradictory gestures) the content of accompanying speech on narrative comprehension in preschool-aged children. Children were presented with a short video narrative that contained either reinforcing gestures, contradictory gestures, or no gestures accompanying the verbal narrative. Results indicated that observing reinforcing gestures significantly benefited narrative comprehension beyond when no gestures were observed. However, observing contradictory gestures was neither significantly beneficial nor significantly detrimental to narrative comprehension beyond observing reinforcing or no gestures. The results from the current study provide valuable insight into the benefits of observing different kinds of iconic gestures on narrative comprehension in preschool-aged children.

What is the role of the film viewer? The effects of narrative comprehension and viewing task on gaze control in film

Film is ubiquitous, but the processes that guide viewers’ attention while viewing film narratives are poorly understood. In fact, many film theorists and practitioners disagree on whether the film stimulus (bottom-up) or the viewer (top-down) is more important in determining how we watch movies. Reading research has shown a strong connection between eye movements and comprehension, and scene perception studies have shown strong effects of viewing tasks on eye movements, but such idiosyncratic top-down control of gaze in film would be anathema to the universal control mainstream filmmakers typically aim for. Thus, in two experiments we tested whether the eye movements and comprehension relationship similarly held in a classic film example, the famous opening scene of Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil (Welles & Zugsmith, Touch of Evil, 1958). Comprehension differences were compared with more volitionally controlled task-based effects on eye movements. To investigate the effects of comprehension on eye movements during film viewing, we manipulated viewers’ comprehension by starting participants at different points in a film, and then tracked their eyes. Overall, the manipulation created large differences in comprehension, but only produced modest differences in eye movements. To amplify top-down effects on eye movements, a task manipulation was designed to prioritize peripheral scene features: a map task. This task manipulation created large differences in eye movements when compared to participants freely viewing the clip for comprehension. Thus, to allow for strong, volitional top-down control of eye movements in film, task manipulations need to make features that are important to narrative comprehension irrelevant to the viewing task. The evidence provided by this experimental case study suggests that filmmakers’ belief in their ability to create systematic gaze behavior across viewers is confirmed, but that this does not indicate universally similar comprehension of the film narrative.

Maturation of Brain Regions Related to the Default Mode Network during Adolescence Facilitates Narrative Comprehension

Objectives

Although the Default Mode Network (DMN) has been examined extensively in adults, developmental characteristics of this network during childhood are not fully understood.

Methods

In this longitudinal study, we characterized the developmental changes in the DMN in fifteen children who were each scanned three times during a narrative comprehension task using magnetic resonance imaging.

Results

Despite similar brain-activation patterns along developmental ages 5 to 18 years when listening to stories, increased, widely distributed deactivation of the DMN was observed in children between the ages of 11 and 18 years. Our findings suggest that changes occurring with increased age, primarily brain maturation and cognitive development drive deactivation of the DMN, which in turn might facilitate attendance to the task.

Conclusions

The interpretation of our results is as a possible reference for the typical course of deactivation of the DMN and to explain the impaired patterns in this neural network associated with different language-related pathologies.

Explaining the moral of the story

Although storybooks are often used as pedagogical tools for conveying moral lessons to children, the ability to spontaneously extract "the moral" of a story develops relatively late. Instead, children tend to represent stories at a concrete level - one that highlights surface features and understates more abstract themes. Here we examine the role of explanation in 5- and 6-year-old children's developing ability to learn the moral of a story. Two experiments demonstrate that, relative to a control condition, prompts to explain aspects of a story facilitate children's ability to override salient surface features, abstract the underlying moral, and generalize that moral to novel contexts. In some cases, generating an explanation is more effective than being explicitly told the moral of the story, as in a more traditional pedagogical exchange. These findings have implications for moral comprehension, the role of explanation in learning, and the development of abstract reasoning in early childhood.

Altered neural circuits accompany lower performance during narrative comprehension in children with reading difficulties: an fMRI study

Narrative comprehension is a linguistic ability that is foundational for future reading ability. The aim of the current study was to examine the neural circuitry of children with reading difficulties (RD) compared to typical readers during a narrative-comprehension task. We hypothesized that due to deficient executive functions, which support narrative comprehension abilities, children with RD would display altered activation and functional connectivity, as well as lower performance on a narrative-comprehension task. Children with RD and typical readers were scanned during a narrative-comprehension task and administered reading behavioral tests. Children with RD scored significantly lower on the narrative-comprehension task than did typical readers. Composite activation maps showed more diffused activation during narrative comprehension in the RD group. Maps comparing the two reading groups showed more activation in the frontal lobes (regions responsible for executive functions), and functional connectivity showed higher global efficiency in children with RD than in typical readers. Global efficiency was negatively correlated with phonological awareness and reading and executive function scores in the entire study group. Children with RD may suffer from narrative-comprehension difficulties due to diffused activation of language areas, as was observed during a narrative-comprehension task. Greater effort in this task may be reflected by the engagement of brain regions related to executive functions and higher functional connectivity or attributed to difficulties in phonological processing and reading and executive functions. Therefore, the accommodation given to children with RD of reading aloud may need to be revised due to the observed difficulty in this domain.

From emergent literacy to reading: how learning to read changes a child's brain

The ability to comprehend language is uniquely human. Behavioural and neuroimaging data reinforce the importance of intact oral language as foundational for the establishment of proficient reading. However, proficient reading is achieved not only via intact biological systems, but also a stimulating Home Literacy Environment.

CONCLUSION

Behavioural and neuroimaging correlates for linguistic ability and literacy exposure support the engagement of neural circuits related to reading acquisition.

The role of ventromedial prefrontal cortex in text comprehension inferences: semantic coherence or socio-emotional perspective?

Two hypotheses about the role of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) in narrative comprehension inferences, global semantic coherence versus socio-emotional perspective, were tested. Seven patients with vmPFC lesions and seven demographically matched healthy comparison participants read short narratives. Using the consistency paradigm, narratives required participants to make either an emotional or visuo-spatial inference, in which a target sentence provided consistent or inconsistent information with a previous emotional state of a character or a visuo-spatial location of an object. Healthy comparison participants made the inferences both for spatial and emotional stories, as shown by longer reading times for inconsistent critical sentences. For patients with vmPFC lesions, inconsistent sentences were read slower in the spatial stories, but not in the emotional ones. This pattern of results is compatible with the hypothesis that vmPFC contributes to narrative comprehension by supporting inferences about socio-emotional aspects of verbally described situations.

Overlapping neural circuitry for narrative comprehension and proficient reading in children and adolescents

Narrative comprehension is a perinatal linguistic ability which is more intuitive than reading activity. Whether there are specific shared brain regions for narrative comprehension and reading that are tuned to reading proficiency, even before reading is acquired, is the question of the current study. We acquired fMRI data during a narrative comprehension task at two age points, when children are age 5-7 (K-2nd grade) and later when the same children were age 11 (5th-7th grade). We then examined correlations between this fMRI data and reading and reading comprehension scores from the same children at age 11. We found that greater frontal and supramarginal gyrus (BA 40) activation in narrative comprehension at the age of 5-7 years old was associated with better word reading and reading comprehension scores at the age of 11. A shift towards temporal and occipital activation was found when correlating their narrative comprehension functional data at age 11, with reading scores at the same age point. We suggest that increased reliance on executive functions and auditory-visual networks when listening to stories before reading is acquired, facilitates reading proficiency in older age and may be a biomarker for future reading ability. Children, who rely on use of imagination/visualization as well as auditory processing for narrative comprehension when they reach age 11, also show greater reading abilities. Understanding concordant neural pathways supporting auditory narrative and reading comprehension might be guide for development of effective tools for reading intervention programs.