Alexander Enge | Seeing language: How learning to read connects vision, sound, and meaning

Neuroimaging research has painted a rich picture of how children’s learning to read reorganizes their object recognition system. Much less is known about (a) how these visual representations of words get tied to speech sounds and meaning, and (b) how these changes generalize to children from cultures using non-alphabetic scripts. We aim to address these questions in our longitudinal and actively controlled fMRI study with children from sub-urban areas in Northern India. In this talk, we will present a theoretical framework and a methodological toolkit that will allow us to explore how these children learn the links between letters, speech sounds, and meaning.