Effects of lexicality, frequency, and spelling-to-sound consistency
on the functional anatomy of reading.
Neuron, (1999)Abstract
Functional neuroimaging was used to investigate three factors that
affect reading performance: first, whether a stimulus is a word or
pronounceable non-word (lexicality), second, how often a word is
encountered (frequency), and third, whether the pronunciation has
a predictable spelling-to-sound correspondence (consistency). Comparisons
between word naming (reading) and visual fixation scans revealed
stimulus-related activation differences in seven regions. A left
frontal region showed effects of consistency and lexicality, indicating
a role in orthographic to phonological transformation. Motor cortex
showed an effect of consistency bilaterally, suggesting that motoric
processes beyond high-level representations of word phonology influence
reading performance. Implications for the integration of these results
into theoretical models of word reading are discussed.
