Neural Mechanisms Underlying Literacy in Bilingual Children with Typical and Atypical Reading Development

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dc.contributor.advisorHernandez, Arturo E.
dc.contributor.committeeMemberTamber-Rosenau, Benjamin J.
dc.contributor.committeeMemberFletcher, Jack M.
dc.contributor.committeeMemberChurch-Lang, Jessica
dc.creatorClaussenius-Kalman, Hannah
dc.creator.orcid0000-0003-1599-3386
dc.date.accessioned2022-06-15T23:31:37Z
dc.date.createdDecember 2021
dc.date.issued2021-12
dc.date.submittedDecember 2021
dc.date.updated2022-06-15T23:31:38Z
dc.description.abstractOne in five children in the United States is bilingual. Despite a plethora of research on monolingual reading development, it is unclear how the brain develops to support literacy when two languages are being learned. Furthermore, it is poorly understood how these neural processes develop in bilingual children who are at risk of having reading difficulties. This study aimed to identify the neural correlates of literacy in 69 bilingual middle schoolers with English reading skills above and below state of Texas benchmarks. Children were given a language questionnaire, proficiency assessments, and were asked to complete reading-related tasks while in a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner that collected functional brain data. Some evidence was found for Hypothesis 1, which was that better task performance would predict ventral reading route activation and worse performance would predict dorsal activation. Specifically, whole-brain general linear modelling showed a positive relationship between task performance and left occipitotemporal activity (part of the ventral route). On the other hand, there was an inverse relationship between task performance and two non-hypothesized areas (right angular gyrus and secondary visual area). These findings indicate that, for bilingual children, recruitment of right hemisphere regions may help compensate when orthographic processing in the second language is less (or not yet) automatized. Hypothesis 2, which was that English proficiency would mediate the relationship between task performance and task activation, was rejected. Instead, post hoc analyses showed that self-report, but not objective, proficiency predicted brain activation in motor and visual regions. These findings highlight the notion that self-report proficiency can capture certain components of language skill that objective measures do not.
dc.description.departmentPsychology, Department of
dc.format.digitalOriginborn digital
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdf
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10657/9217
dc.language.isoeng
dc.rightsThe author of this work is the copyright owner. UH Libraries and the Texas Digital Library have their permission to store and provide access to this work. Further transmission, reproduction, or presentation of this work is prohibited except with permission of the author(s).
dc.subjectLanguage impairment
dc.subjectDyslexia
dc.subjectReading difficulty
dc.subjectReading development
dc.subjectBilingualism
dc.titleNeural Mechanisms Underlying Literacy in Bilingual Children with Typical and Atypical Reading Development
dc.type.dcmiText
dc.type.genreThesis
dcterms.accessRightsThe full text of this item is not available at this time because the student has placed this item under an embargo for a period of time. The Libraries are not authorized to provide a copy of this work during the embargo period.
local.embargo.lift2023-12-01
local.embargo.terms2023-12-01
thesis.degree.collegeCollege of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
thesis.degree.departmentPsychology, Department of
thesis.degree.disciplineDevelopmental, Behavioral, and Cognitive Neuroscience
thesis.degree.grantorUniversity of Houston
thesis.degree.levelDoctoral
thesis.degree.nameDoctor of Philosophy

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