Language First, Cognition Later: Different Trajectories of Subcomponents of the Future-Reading Network in Processing Narratives from Kindergarten to Adolescence

Abstract

Narrative comprehension is a linguistic ability that emerges early in life and has a critical role in language development, reading acquisition, and comprehension. According to the Simple View of Reading model, reading is acquired through word decoding and linguistic comprehension. Here, within and between networks, functional connectivity in several brain networks supporting both language and reading abilities was examined from prereading to proficient reading age in 32 healthy children, ages 5-18 years, scanned annually while listening to stories over 12 years. Functional connectivity changes within and between the networks were assessed and compared between the years using hierarchical linear regression and were related to reading abilities. At prereading age, the networks related to basic language processing accounted for 32.5% of the variation of reading ability at reading age (at 12-14 years) (R² = 0.325, p = 0.05). At age 17, more complex cognitive networks were involved and accounted for 97.4% of the variation in reading ability (R² = 0.974, p = 0.022). Overall, networks composing the future-reading network are highly involved in processing narratives along development; however, networks related to semantic, phonological, and syntactic processing predict reading ability earlier in life, and more complex networks predict reading proficiency later in life.

Keywords: child development; executive functions; functional connectivity; language; narrative comprehension; reading.

FIG. 1.

The narrative comprehension (stories listening) task. The task contains the story listening condition and the pure tones condition (i.e., control period); both are presented in blocks of 30 sec each. The task lasted 330 sec.

FIG. 2.

Visual, syntactic, semantic, phonological processing, and EF networks. The reading network used in the current study includes the EF network (in red), the phonological (in blue), the semantic (in yellow), the syntactic network (in purple), and the visual processing network (in green). EF, executive function. Color images are available online.

FIG. 3.

A glass whole-brain view of the reading related networks. A transverse view of the maps of the reading networks (syntactic in brown, semantic in purple, phonological in red, EF in blue, and the visual processing in yellow). Top: axial view; bottom: sagittal view. Color images are available online.

FIG. 4.

Correlation coefficient matrices of the within and between functional connectivity reading related networks. A representation of the within- and between-network functional connectivity correlation matrices with development. Blue and red represent negative and positive within and between functional connectivity values, respectively (the hot color represents more positive functional connectivity values; cooler colors represent more negative functional connectivity values). Color images are available online.