The Nature of a Writing System Shapes the Cognitive and Neural Mechanisms for Reading Acquisition.
Overview
- Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London, London, UK
- Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, UK
- Advanced Research Computing Centre, University College London, London, UK
- Faculty of Human Science, University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany
Abstract
Writing systems are cultural inventions that differ in how they represent spoken language. We tested how the brain learns to map arbitrary visual symbols to sound and meaning by comparing neural activity for artificial writing systems that were either alphabetic (systematic symbol-sound mappings) or logographic (arbitrary symbol-sound mappings). Twenty-four adults learned to read aloud and comprehend novel words written in each system. After 2 weeks of training, functional magnetic resonance imaging during reading comprehension revealed that the dorsal pathway (inferior parietal gyrus, inferior frontal gyrus), which is involved in mapping from print-to-sound, was more active for the alphabetic system, whereas the ventral pathway (anterior fusiform gyrus, middle temporal gyrus), which is involved in mapping from print-to-meaning, was more active for the logographic system. Combined with performance differences, these findings indicate that systematic symbol-sound mappings allowed the brain to bridge the interface between vision and meaning via sound, whereas an absence of systematicity made it more efficient to link vision directly to meaning. Thus, the same brain finds different solutions to the problem of reading that capitalise on the statistical properties of culturally invented writing systems.
Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.
Code
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The paper's code and data availability statement is in the Data section.
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Data
Datasets cited
- doi:10.18112/
openneuro.ds006021.v1.0. , at OpenNeuro; found in “DATA AND CODE AVAILABILITY STATEMENTS”1 - osf:nujm3, at OSF; found in the text, “Phonological forms”
Data and code availability statements
Stimuli, behavioural data, the behavioural data analysis scripts, depiction of the neuroimaging analysis pipeline, and regions of interest used for neuroimaging analyses are available on the Open Science Framework (https://
Raw neuroimaging data in BIDS format are available on OpenNeuro (doi:10.18112/
Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.
Versions
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Version 2, 28 September 2026
- Funding: added Economic and Social Research Council: ES/L002264/1; Royal Holloway, University of London
Version 1, 28 September 2026: the first record
Recorded: type, language, journal, volume, pages, dates, 6 authors, 5 keywords, 47 references.
Cite
This paper
Taylor, J. S. H., Jowett, A., Auer, T., Hsieh, C.-Y., Lingnau, A., & Rastle, K. (2026). The Nature of a Writing System Shapes the Cognitive and Neural Mechanisms for Reading Acquisition. Neurobiology of language (Cambridge, Mass.), 7, NOL.a.248. https://
BibTeX
@article{taylor2026natur
author = {Taylor, J S H and Jowett, Adam and Auer, Tibor and Hsieh, Cheng-Yu and Lingnau, Angelika and Rastle, Kathleen},
title = {{The Nature of a Writing System Shapes the Cognitive and Neural Mechanisms for Reading Acquisition}},
journal = {Neurobiology of language (Cambridge, Mass.)},
year = {2026},
month = may,
volume = {7},
pages = {NOL.a.248},
publisher = {MIT Press},
issn = {2641-4368},
doi = {10.1162/
url = {https://
pmid = {42199524},
pmcid = {PMC13200069}
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
AU - Taylor, J S H
AU - Jowett, Adam
AU - Auer, Tibor
AU - Hsieh, Cheng-Yu
AU - Lingnau, Angelika
AU - Rastle, Kathleen
TI - The Nature of a Writing System Shapes the Cognitive and Neural Mechanisms for Reading Acquisition
T2 - Neurobiology of language (Cambridge, Mass.)
J2 - Neurobiol Lang (Camb)
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/
VL - 7
SP - NOL.a.248
SN - 2641-4368
PB - MIT Press
DO - 10.1162/
UR - https://
LA - en
ER -
CSL-JSON
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