Hsu, C. 1 , Tzeng, Y. 2 & Lee, C. 1, 2
1 Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica, Taiwan
2 Institute of Neuroscience, National Yang-Ming University, Taiwan
This study aimed to explore how reading ability shapes brain activations in Chinese visual word recognition. Hilbert-Huang transformation was used to extract low frequency bands (1-7 Hz) that might correspond to reading-related ERP activities, i.e., N170 and N400. Skilled readers and children (from 2nd to 6th grades) were asked to perform a pronounceable judgment task for real characters, pseducharacters, and noncharacters. Children were divided into high and low reading ability groups based on their scores of the Chinese Character Recognition Test. By using low-resolution electromagnetic tomography with ERP data, skilled readers showed a typical reading-related network, including the left fusiform gyrus (165 ms), the right fusiform gyrus (185 ms), the left inferior parietal cortex (210 ms), the left superior temporal gyrus (during 300-500 ms), and bilateral inferior frontal gyrus (700 ms). Children tended to show right-lateralized fusiform activation in later time window (high ability: 200 ms; low ability: 230 ms). N400 related activations were localized in the left superior temporal gyrus and the left meddle frontal gyrus for high ability children while low ability children showed strong activation in the right prefrontal cortex. This finding suggests that frontal activation during 300-500 ms reflects reading proficiency.