This study investigated the neural basis of letter and speech sound (LS) integration in 53 typical readers (35 girls, all White) during the first 2 years of reading education (ages 7–9). Changes in both sensory (multisensory vs unisensory) and linguistic (congruent vs incongruent) aspects of LS integration were examined. The left superior temporal cortex and bilateral inferior frontal cortex showed increasing activation for multisensory over unisensory LS over time, driven by reduced activation to speech sounds. No changes were noted in the congruency effect. However, at age nine, heightened activation to incongruent over congruent LS pairs were observed, correlating with individual differences in reading development. This suggests that the incongruency effect evolves at varying rates depending on reading skills.

中文翻译：

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正规教育头几年典型阅读发展中的字母-语音声音整合

本研究调查了 53 名典型读者（35 名女孩，均为白人）在阅读教育的前 2 年（7-9 岁）期间字母和语音 (LS) 整合的神经基础。检查了 LS 整合的感觉（多感觉与单感觉）和语言（一致与不一致）方面的变化。随着时间的推移，左上颞叶皮层和双侧下额叶皮层显示出多感觉的激活比单感觉 LS 的激活增加，这是由于语音激活减少所致。一致性效应没有发生变化。然而，在九岁时，观察到不一致的 LS 对的激活程度高于一致的 LS 对，这与阅读发展的个体差异相关。这表明不一致效应会根据阅读技能以不同的速度发展。