Dziegiel, G. 1, 2 , Luniewska, M. 1, 2 , Jednorog, K. . 1 , Zelechowska, A. 1 , Debska, A. 1, 2 , Chyl, K. 1 , Banaszkiewicz, A. 3 & Marchewka, A. 3
1 Laboratory of Psychophysiology, Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology, PAS, Poland
2 Faculty of Psychology, University of Warsaw, Poland
3 Laboratory of Brain Imagining, Neurobiology Center, Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology, PAS, Poland
Phonological awareness is a crucial predictor of reading outcomes. Its development may depend on more basic, perceptual auditory skills.
We investigated the relationship between auditory skills and brain activation in an auditory word rhyming task. A group of beginning readers: 47 children with (FHD+) and 35 without familial history for dyslexia (FHD-) went through a test battery measuring reading, rapid automatized naming (RAN), as well as phonological and auditory skills. Factor analysis revealed two factors: (1) a phonological factor including phoneme analysis, segmentation, rhyme, alliteration and RAN, and (2) an auditory factor which included frequency discrimination and stream segregation.
We then run whole brain regression analysis to explore correlation of the factors with brain activity in the rhyming task. We found a significant interaction between auditory factor and family history for dyslexia. In FHD- group auditory skills correlated negatively with activation of left and right temporal pole, left inferior orbital gyrus, insula and caudate. In FHD+ group we found a positive correlation with auditory skills in the right temporal pole, left putamen, bilateral caudate, left superior and middle temporal gyri, right thalamus and left pallidum. Our results suggest that auditory skills play an important, perhaps compensatory, role in phonological processing.