How the Brain Processes a Word: HSE Researchers Compare Reading Routes in Adults and Children
Researchers from the HSE Center for Language and Brain used magnetoencephalography to study how the brains of adults and children respond to words during reading. They showed that in children the brain takes longer to process words that are frequently used in everyday speech, while rare words and pseudowords are processed in the same way—slowly and in parts. With age, the system is reorganised: high-frequency words shift to a fast route, whereas new letter combinations are still analysed slowly. The study was published in the journal Psychophysiology.
When a person reads, their gaze moves along a line almost automatically; it seems as if meanings simply appear in the mind. At the level of the brain, however, reading is a chain of rapid processes. First, letters are recognised; then they are combined into syllables and words; finally, the word is linked to its meaning. Each stage activates different areas of the cerebral cortex. At the same time, the reading path is shorter for some words than for others. This depends on a word’s frequency (how often it occurs in the language) and the age at which it was acquired.
In psycholinguistics, the idea of two reading routes has long been discussed: a fast route for familiar words and a slower one for unfamiliar letter combinations. This idea has been supported by both behavioural experiments and neurolinguistic studies. However, there have been relatively few studies examining which cortical areas are involved in reading words of different frequencies and how this process changes in children, whose reading system is still developing, and their results have been inconsistent.
In the new study, researchers from the HSE Center for Language and Brain used magnetoencephalography (MEG)—a method that records brain activity with millisecond precision and makes it possible to determine where in the cortex a signal arises. The researchers analysed two characteristics of the signal: its amplitude (how strongly a particular brain area is activated) and the time of the signal peak (how many milliseconds after the stimulus appears the amplitude reaches its maximum).
This is one of the first studies in which adults and children performed the same word-reading task, making it possible to compare how fast and slow reading routes mature. The experiment involved 30 adults and 30 children aged 7–12, all native speakers of Russian with no reading impairments. Participants silently read high-frequency words (сумка, ручка, диван), low-frequency words (карцер, реагент, сводка), and pseudowords (смейф, кифил, пузуч).
The results in both groups showed that the higher the frequency of a word, the smaller the amplitude of the brain signal and the earlier the moment of its peak activity—that is, the stage at which the word is recognised. When reading high-frequency words, temporal regions associated with word recognition and comprehension were also activated more quickly. For lower-frequency words and pseudowords, the response was stronger and unfolded over a longer period, even though the same network of brain regions was involved. These findings fit well with the idea of two reading routes: familiar words follow a shorter trajectory, while unfamiliar ones take a more effortful path.
At the same time, children required much more time and greater cognitive resources to process the same stimuli. In children, delays accumulated as word processing progressed. The early visual response in the occipital cortex appeared almost simultaneously in adults and children (around 70–130 ms). At the next stage, associated with the analysis of letter sequences, the peak of activity in children was shifted by about 40–60 ms. At the later stage, when regions involved in phonological and semantic processing are engaged, the delay reached 150–200 ms compared with adults.
Signal amplitudes were higher in children: to process the same word, the developing brain required more resources. Differences were also observed when reading high-frequency words: they most clearly revealed the gap between a mature and a developing reading system. Importantly, the researchers also detected a frequency effect in the superior temporal region in children. This suggests that the lexical, fast reading route is already beginning to operate, but is not yet stable. Another important finding concerned the interpretation of pseudowords.
Tatiana Bolgina
‘In children, pseudowords elicited the same resource-demanding response as rare real words—possibly because the brain processes both of them in parts. The absence of a clear distinction between these two categories indicates that the fast, automatic mode of reading has not yet fully developed in children,’ commented one of the authors of the article, Junior Research Fellow at the HSE Center for Language and Brain, Tatiana Bolgina.
At the same time, the brain regions that were activated in children and adults were almost identical. What differed were not the activation maps, but the speed and intensity of brain activity. The study shows that the core mechanisms of reading are established early, but gradually become more efficient, precise, and faster. The observed patterns of brain responses may serve as a reference point for understanding the development of reading skills.
The study was conducted as part of the HSE University Basic Research Programme.
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