Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T08:21:12.507Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Japanese and English sentence reading comprehension and writing systems: An fMRI study of first and second language effects on brain activation*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2009

AUGUSTO BUCHWEITZ ,
ROBERT A. MASON ,
MIHOKO HASEGAWA  and
MARCEL A. JUST
AUGUSTO BUCHWEITZ*
Affiliation:
Carnegie Mellon University
ROBERT A. MASON
Affiliation:
Carnegie Mellon University
MIHOKO HASEGAWA
Affiliation:
RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Japan
MARCEL A. JUST
Affiliation:
Carnegie Mellon University
*
Address for correspondence: Augusto Buchweitz, Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging, Carnegie Mellon University, Department of Psychology, 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to compare brain activation from native Japanese (L1) readers reading hiragana (syllabic) and kanji (logographic) sentences, and English as a second language (L2). Kanji showed more activation than hiragana in right-hemisphere occipito-temporal lobe areas associated with visuospatial processing; hiragana, in turn, showed more activation than kanji in areas of the brain associated with phonological processing. L1 results underscore the difference in visuospatial and phonological processing demands between the systems. Reading in English as compared to either of the Japanese systems showed more activation in inferior frontal gyrus, medial frontal gyrus, and angular gyrus. The additional activation in English in these areas may have been associated with an increased cognitive demand for phonological processing and verbal working memory. More generally, L2 results suggest more effortful reading comprehension processes associated with phonological rehearsal. The study contributes to the understanding of differential brain responses to different writing systems and to reading comprehension in a second language.

Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , April 2009 , pp. 141 - 151
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

This research was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health Grant MH029617. We would like to thank Natasha Tokowicz and the current members of the CCBI reading group for helpful comments on a previous draft of this paper.

References

Bolger, D. J., Perfetti, C. A. & Schneider, W. (2005). A cross-cultural effect on the brain revisited. Human Brain Mapping, 25, 91–104.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chee, M. W., Caplan, D., Soon, C. S., Sriram, N., Tan, E. W., Thiel, T. & Weekes, B. (1999). Processing of visually presented sentences in Mandarin and English studied with fMRI. Neuron, 23, 127–137.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cohen, L. & Dehaene, S. (2004). Specialization within the ventral stream: The case for the visual word form area. NeuroImage, 22, 466–476.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Friston, K., Ashburner, J., Frith, C., Poline, J.-B., Heather, J. & Frackowiak, R. (1995). Spatial registration and normalization of images. Human Brain Mapping, 2, 165–189.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hasegawa, M., Carpenter, P. A. & Just, M. A. (2002). An fMRI study of bilingual sentence comprehension and workload. NeuroImage, 15, 647–660.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jeong, H., Sugiura, M., Sassa, Y., Yokoyama, S., Horie, K., Sato, S., Taira, M. & Kawashima, R. (2007). Cross-linguistic influence on brain activation during second language processing: An fMRI study. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 10, 175–187.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Just, M. A., Carpenter, P. A., Keller, T. A., Eddy, W. F. & Thulborn, K. R. (1996). Brain activation modulated by sentence comprehension. Science, 274, 114–116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, K. H. S., Relkin, N. R., Lee, K. & Hirsch, J. (1997). Distinct cortical areas associated with native and second languages. Nature, 388, 171–174.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Marian, V., Spivey, M. & Hirsch, J. (2003). Shared and separate systems in bilingual language processing: Converging evidence from eye-tracking and brain imaging. Brain and Language, 86, 70–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matsuo, K., Kato, C., Okada, T., Moriya, T., Glover, G. H. & Nakai, T. (2003). Finger movements lighten the neural loads in the recognition of ideographic characters. Cognitive Brain Research, 17, 263–272.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mechelli, A., Crinion, J. T., Noppeney, U., O'Doherty, J., Ashburner, J., Frackowiak, R. S. & Price, C. J. (2004). Structural plasticity in the bilingual brain. Nature, 431, 757.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Meschyan, G. & Hernandez, A. E. (2006). Impact of language proficiency and orthographic transparency on bilingual word reading: An fMRI investigation. NeuroImage, 29, 1134–1140.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nakamura, K., Dehaene, S., Jobert, A., Bihan, D. L. & Kouider, S. (2005). Subliminal convergence of kanji and kana words: Further evidence for functional parcellation of the posterior temporal cortex in visual word perception. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 17, 954–968.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nakamura, K., Honda, M., Okada, T., Hanakawa, T., Toma, K., Fukuyama, H., Konishi, J. & Shibasaki, H. (2000). Participation of the left posterior inferior temporal cortex in writing and mental recall of kanji orthography: A functional MRI study. Brain, 123, 954–967.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Oldfield, R. C. (1971). The assessment and analysis of handedness: The Edinburgh Inventory. Neuropsychologia, 9, 97–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paradis, M. (2003). Differential use of cerebral mechanisms in bilinguals. In Banich, M. T. & Mack, M. (eds.), Mind, brain, and language: Multidisciplinary perspectives, pp. 351–370. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Paulesu, E., McCrory, F., Fazio, F., Menoncello, L., Brunswick, N., Cappa, S. F., Cotelli, M., Cossu, G., Corte, F., Lorusso, M., Pesenti, S., Gallagher, A., Price, C., Frith, C. D. & Frith, U. (2000). A cultural effect on brain activation. Nature Neuroscience, 3, 91–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perani, D. & Abutalebi, J. (2005). The neural basis of first and second language processing. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 15, 202–206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perfetti, C. A., Liu, Y., Fiez, J., Nelson, J., Bolger, D. & Tan, L. H. (2007). Reading in two writing systems: Accommodation and assimilation of the brain's reading network. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 10, 131–146.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sakurai, Y., Takeuchi, S., Takada, T., Horiuchi, E., Nakase, H. & Sakuta, M. (2000). Alexia caused by a fusiform or posterior inferior temporal lesion. Journal of Neurological Sciences, 178, 42–51.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shieh, C. C., Luke, K. K., Tan, L. H., Wai, Y. Y., Wan, Y. L. & Liu, H. L. (2001). Brain mechanisms for syntactic and semantic processing by Chinese and English bilinguals. NeuroImage, 13, 602.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tan, L. H., Laird, A. R., Li, K. & Fox, P. T. (2005a). Neuroanatomical correlates of phonological processing of Chinese characters and alphabetic words: A meta-analysis. Human Brain Mapping, 25, 83–91.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tan, L. H., Liu, H., Perfetti, C. A., Spinks, J. A., Fox, P. T. & Gao, J. (2001). The neural system underlying Chinese logograph reading. NeuroImage, 13, 836–846.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tan, L. H., Spinks, J. A., Eden, G. F., Perfetti, C. A. & Siok, W. T. (2005b). Reading depends on writing, in Chinese. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 102, 8781–8785.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tham, W. W. P, Rickard Liow, S. J., Rajapakse, J. C., Leong, T. C., Ng, S. E. S., Lim, W. E. H. & Ho, L. G. (2005). Phonological processing in Chinese–English bilingual biscriptals: An fMRI study. NeuroImage, 28, 579–587.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Thuy, D. H. D., Matsuo, K., Nakamura, K., Toma, K., Oga, T., Nakai, T., Shibasaki, H. & Fukuyama, H. (2004). Implicit and explicit processing of kanji and kana words and non-words studied with fMRI. NeuroImage, 23, 878–889.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tzourio-Mazoyer, N., Landeau, B., Papathanassiou, D., Crivello, F., Etard, O., Delcroix, N., Mazoyer, B. & Joliot, M. (2002). Automated anatomical labeling of activations in SPM using a macroscopic anatomical parcellation of the MNI MRI single subject brain. NeuroImage, 15, 273–289.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Yamadori, A. (2000). Neuropsychological model of reading based on Japanese experiences. Psychologia 43, 1–14.Google Scholar
Yokoyama, S., Okamoto, H., Miyamoto, T., Yoshimoto, K., Kim, J., Iwata, K., Jeong, H., Uchida, S., Ikuta, N., Sassa, Y., Nakamura, W., Horie, K., Sato, S. & Kawashima, R. (2006). Cortical activation in the processing of passive sentences in L1 and L2: An fMRI study. NeuroImage, 30, 570–579.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed