Parentese in infancy predicts 5-year language complexity and conversational turns.

Parental input is considered a key predictor of language achievement during the first years of life, yet relatively few studies have assessed its effects on longer-term outcomes. We assess the effects of parental quantity of speech, use of parentese (the acoustically exaggerated, clear, and higher-pitched speech), and turn-taking in infancy, on child language at 5 years. Using a longitudinal dataset of daylong LENA recordings collected with the same group of English-speaking infants (N=44) at 6, 10, 14, 18, 24 months and then again at 5 years, we demonstrate that parents' consistent (defined as stable and high) use of parentese in infancy was a potent predictor of lexical diversity, mean length of utterance, and frequency of conversational turn-taking between children and adults at Kindergarten entry. Together, these findings highlight the potential importance of a high-quality language learning environment in infancy for success at the start of formal schooling.

A comparison of automatic and manual measures of turn-taking in monolingual and bilingual contexts.

The Language ENvironment Analysis system (LENA) records children's language environment and provides an automatic estimate of adult-child conversational turn count (CTC) by automatically identifying adult and child speech in close temporal proximity. To assess the reliability of this measure, we examine correlation and agreement between LENA's CTC estimates and manual measurement of adult-child turn-taking in two corpora collected in the USA: a bilingual corpus of Spanish-English-speaking families with infants between 4 and 22 months (n = 37), and a corpus of monolingual families with English-speaking 5-year-olds (n = 56). In each corpus for each child, 100 30-second segments were extracted from daylong recordings in two ways, yielding a total of 9300 minutes of manually annotated audio. LENA's CTC estimate for the same segments was obtained through the LENA software. The two measures of CTC had low correlations for the segments from the monolingual 5-year-olds sampled in both ways, and somewhat higher correlations for the bilingual samples. LENA substantially overestimated CTC on average, relative to manual measurement, for three out of four analysis conditions, and limits of agreement were wide in all cases. Segment-level analyses demonstrated that accidental contiguity had the largest individual impact on LENA's average CTC error, affecting 12-17% of analyzed segments. Other factors significantly contributing to CTC error were speech from other children, presence of multiple adults, and presence of electronic media. These results indicate wide discrepancies between LENA's CTC estimates and manual CTCs, and call into question the comparability of LENA's CTC measure across participants, conditions, and developmental time points.

Language input in late infancy scaffolds emergent literacy skills and predicts reading related white matter development.

Longitudinal studies provide the unique opportunity to test whether early language provides a scaffolding for the acquisition of the ability to read. This study tests the hypothesis that parental language input during the first 2 years of life predicts emergent literacy skills at 5 years of age, and that white matter development observed early in the 3rd year (at 26 months) may help to account for these effects. We collected naturalistic recordings of parent and child language at 6, 10, 14, 18, and 24 months using the Language ENvironment Analysis system (LENA) in a group of typically developing infants. We then examined the relationship between language measures during infancy and follow-up measures of reading related skills at age 5 years, in the same group of participants (N = 53). A subset of these children also completed diffusion and quantitative MRI scans at age 2 years (N = 20). Within this subgroup, diffusion tractography was used to identify white matter pathways that are considered critical to language and reading development, namely, the arcuate fasciculus (AF), superior and inferior longitudinal fasciculi, and inferior occipital-frontal fasciculus. Quantitative macromolecular proton fraction (MPF) mapping was used to characterize myelin density within these separately defined regions of interest. The longitudinal data were then used to test correlations between early language input and output, white matter measures at age 2 years, and pre-literacy skills at age 5 years. Parental language input, child speech output, and parent-child conversational turns correlated with pre-literacy skills, as well as myelin density estimates within the left arcuate and superior longitudinal fasciculus. Mediation analyses indicated that the left AF accounted for longitudinal relationships between infant home language measures and 5-year letter identification and letter-sound knowledge, suggesting that the left AF myelination at 2 years may serve as a mechanism by which early language experience supports emergent literacy.

Start shallow and grow deep: The development of a Hebrew reading brain.

Brain plasticity implies that readers of different orthographies can have different reading networks. Theoretical models suggest that reading acquisition in transparent orthographies relies on mapping smaller orthographic units to phonology, than reading opaque orthographies; but what are the neural mechanisms underlying this difference? Hebrew has a transparent (pointed) script used for beginners, and a non-transparent script used for skilled readers. The current study examined the developmental changes in brain regions associated with phonological and orthographic processes during reading pointed and un-pointed words. Our results highlight some changes that are universal in reading development, such as a developmental increase in frontal involvement (in bilateral inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) pars opercularis), and increase in left asymmetry (in IFG pars opercularis and superior temporal gyrus, STG) of the reading network. Our results also showed a developmental increase in activation in STG, which stands in contrast to previous studies in other orthographies. We further found an interaction of word length and diacritics in bilateral STG and the visual word form area (VWFA) across both groups. These findings suggest that children slightly adjust their reading depending on orthographic transparency, relying on smaller units when reading a transparent script and on larger units when reading an opaque script. Our results also showed that phonological abilities across groups correlated with activation in the VWFA, regardless of transparency, supporting the continued role of phonology at all levels of orthographic transparency. Our findings are consistent with multiple route reading models, in which both phonological and orthographic processing of multiple size units continue to play a role in children's reading of transparent and opaque scripts during reading development. The results further demonstrate the importance of taking into account differences between orthographies when constructing neural models of reading acquisition.

Can an Online Reading Camp Teach 5-Year-Old Children to Read?

Literacy is an essential skill. Learning to read is a requirement for becoming a self-providing human being. However, while spoken language is acquired naturally with exposure to language without explicit instruction, reading and writing need to be taught explicitly. Decades of research have shown that well-structured teaching of phonological awareness, letter knowledge, and letter-to-sound mapping is crucial in building solid foundations for the acquisition of reading. During the COVID-19 pandemic, children worldwide did not have access to consistent and structured teaching and are, as a consequence, predicted to be behind in the development of their reading skills. Subsequent evidence confirms this prediction. With the best evidence-based practice in mind, we developed an online version of a well-structured early literacy training program (Reading Camp) for 5-year-old children. This 2-week online Reading Camp program is designed for pre-K children. It incorporates critical components of the fundamental skills essential to learning to read and is taught online in an interactive, multi-sensory, and peer-learning environment. We measure the participants' literacy skills and other related skills before and after participating in the online Reading Camp and compare the results to no-treatment controls. Results show that children who participated in the online Reading Camp improved significantly on all parameters in relation to controls. Our results demonstrate that a well-structured evidence-based reading instruction program, even if online and short-term, benefits 5-year-old children in learning to read. With the potential to scale up this online program, the evidence presented here, alongside previous evidence for the efficacy of the in-person program, indicates that the online Reading Camp program is effective and can be used to tackle a variety of questions regarding structural and functional plasticity in the early stages of reading acquisition.

Neural Processing of Morphology During Reading in Children.

The importance of morphological segmentation for reading has been shown in numerous behavioral studies in children and adults. However, little is known about developmental changes in the neural basis of morphological processing. In addition to effects of age and reading skill, morphological processing during reading may be affected by the morphological structure of the language and the transparency of its orthography. Hebrew provides a unique opportunity to study these factors, with its rich morphological structure, and two versions of script that differ in orthographic transparency. Two groups of children (2nd-3rd and 5th-6th graders) were scanned using fMRI while reading aloud Hebrew nouns. Half of the words were composed of roots and templates (bi-morphemic) and half were mono-morphemic. The words were presented at two levels of transparency: with or without diacritics. ROI analyses showed greater activation for mono over bi-morphemic words across groups in the anterior portions of bilateral middle and superior temporal gyri, especially for the transparent script. These results diverge from a previous finding in adults, showing left frontal activation in the non-transparent script with the same stimuli. These results support the early sensitivity of young Hebrew readers to the rich morphological structure of their language but suggest a developmental change in the role of morphological processes during reading. While in adults morpho-phonological segmentation during reading may compensate for orthographic opacity, morphological processes in children may rely more on semantic aspects, and are enhanced by orthographic transparency.

A longitudinal neuroimaging dataset on language processing in children ages 5, 7, and 9 years old.

This dataset examines language development with a longitudinal design and includes diffusion- and T1-weighted structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), task-based functional MRI (fMRI), and a battery of psycho-educational assessments and parental questionnaires. We collected data from 5.5-6.5-year-old children (ses-5) and followed them up when they were 7-8 years old (ses-7) and then again at 8.5-10 years old (ses-9). To increase the sample size at the older time points, another cohort of 7-8-year-old children (ses-7) were recruited and followed up when they were 8.5-10 years old (ses-9). In total, 322 children who completed at least one structural and functional scan were included. Children performed four fMRI tasks consisting of two word-level tasks examining phonological and semantic processing and two sentence-level tasks investigating semantic and syntactic processing. The MRI data is valuable for examining changes over time in interactive specialization due to the use of multiple imaging modalities and tasks in this longitudinal design. In addition, the extensive psycho-educational assessments and questionnaires provide opportunities to explore brain-behavior and brain-environment associations.

Both frontal and temporal cortex exhibit phonological and semantic specialization during spoken language processing in 7- to 8-year-old children.

A previous functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study by Weiss et al. (Weiss et al., Human Brain Mapping, 2018, 39, 4334-4348) examined brain specialization for phonological and semantic processing of spoken words in young children who were 5 to 6 years old and found evidence for specialization in the temporal but not the frontal lobe. According to a prominent neurocognitive model of language development (Skeide & Friederici, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2016, 17, 323-332), the frontal lobe matures later than the temporal lobe. Thus, the current study aimed to examine if brain specialization in the frontal lobe can be observed in a slightly older cohort of children aged 7 to 8 years old using the same experimental and analytical approach as in Weiss et al. (Weiss et al., Human Brain Mapping, 2018, 39, 4334-4348). One hundred and ten typically developing children were recruited and were asked to perform a sound judgment task, tapping into phonological processing, and a meaning judgment task, tapping into semantic processing, while in the MRI scanner. Direct task comparisons showed that these children exhibited language specialization in both the temporal and the frontal lobes, with the left posterior dorsal inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) showing greater activation for the sound than the meaning judgment task, and the left anterior ventral IFG and the left posterior middle temporal gyrus (MTG) showing greater activation for the meaning than the sound judgment task. These findings demonstrate that 7- to 8-year-old children have already begun to develop a language-related specialization in the frontal lobe, suggesting that early elementary schoolers rely on both specialized linguistic manipulation and representation mechanisms to perform language tasks.

Morphological decomposition compensates for imperfections in phonological decoding. Neural evidence from typical and dyslexic readers of an opaque orthography.

The current study examined the widely held, but un-tested, assumption that morphological decomposition can compensate for missing phonological information in reading opaque orthographies. In addition, we tested whether morphological decomposition can compensate for the phonological decoding deficits in readers with dyslexia. Hebrew provides a unique opportunity to test these questions as it has a rich Semitic morphology, and two versions of script: a transparent orthography (with diacritic marks, 'pointed') and an opaque orthography (without diacritic marks, 'un-pointed'). In two experiments, one behavioral and one fMRI, skilled and dyslexic readers read aloud Hebrew nouns: half bi-morphemic (root + pattern) and half mono-morphemic (non-decomposable). Each word was presented both in the transparent orthography (pointed), and in the opaque orthography (un-pointed). While skilled readers were faster, and showed no effects of diacritics or morphology, dyslexic readers read pointed words more slowly than un-pointed words and bi-morphemic words faster than mono-morphemic words. The imaging results showed: 1) In both groups a morphological effect was found in un-pointed words, in left inferior and middle frontal gyri, associated with morpho-phonological decomposition. 2) Only readers with dyslexia showed a morphological effect in pointed words in the left occipito-temporal cortex, associated with orthographic processing. 3) Dyslexic readers also showed a positive association between morphological awareness and activation in the left occipito-temporal cortex during reading of all words, and activation in inferior frontal cortex during reading of un-pointed bi-morphemic words. Altogether, these findings suggest that in both typical and dyslexic readers morphological decomposition can compensate for the missing phonological information in an opaque orthography. The results also show that readers with dyslexia can rely on morphological decomposition to compensate for their deficits in phonological decoding. Finally, these results highlight the way in which unique language specific properties shape the neural mechanisms underlying typical and atypical reading.

Neural specialization of phonological and semantic processing in young children.

This study aimed to examine early specialization of brain regions for phonological and semantic processing of spoken language in young children. Thirty-five typically developing children aged from 5 to 6 years performed auditory phonological (same sound judgment) and semantic (related meaning judgment) word-level tasks. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we examined specialization within the language network, by conducting three levels of analysis. First, we directly compared activation between tasks and found a greater sound judgment as compared to meaning judgment activation in left superior temporal gyrus (STG) and supramarginal gyrus. In contrast, greater meaning judgment as compared to sound judgment task activation was found in left middle temporal gyrus (MTG). Second, we examined the brain-behavior correlations and found that phonological skill was correlated with the task difference in activation in left superior temporal sulcus, whereas semantic skill was correlated with the task difference in activation in left MTG. Third, we compared between two experimental conditions within each task and found a parametric effect in left STG for the sound judgment task, and a parametric effect in left MTG for the meaning judgment task. The results of this study indicate that, by the age of 5-6 years, typically developing children already show some specialization of temporo-parietal brain regions for phonological and semantic processes. However, there were no task differences in the left inferior frontal gyrus suggesting that the frontal cortex may not yet be specialized in this age range, which is consistent with the delayed maturation of the frontal cortex.

Neural correlates of the lexicality effect in children.

The comparison of words and pseudowords has been extensively used in adult neuroimaging studies to inform neurocognitive models of reading but has rarely been used to inform models of reading acquisition. Using a rhyming judgment task, the current study examined age-related differences in the spelling to sound mapping mechanisms involved in word and pseudoword reading. We hypothesized a developmental increase in specialization of the brain mechanisms engaged for word and pseudoword processing. Consistent with adult studies, children in the current study demonstrated a greater activation for words as compared to pseudowords in the anterior left ventral occipito-temporal cortex (vOT). Inconsistent with adult studies, children also showed greater activation for words as compared to pseudowords in the mid-posterior left vOT, indicating a robust semantic influence on orthographic processing in young readers. Furthermore, our results did not indicate a lexicality by age interaction for 8- to 13-year-old children, suggesting that the adult-like specialization in the left vOT only appears later in development.

Orthographic Transparency Enhances Morphological Segmentation in Children Reading Hebrew Words.

Morphological processing of derived words develops simultaneously with reading acquisition. However, the reader's engagement in morphological segmentation may depend on the language morphological richness and orthographic transparency, and the readers' reading skills. The current study tested the common idea that morphological segmentation is enhanced in non-transparent orthographies to compensate for the absence of phonological information. Hebrew's rich morphology and the dual version of the Hebrew script (with and without diacritic marks) provides an opportunity to study the interaction of orthographic transparency and morphological segmentation on the development of reading skills in a within-language design. Hebrew speaking 2nd (N = 27) and 5th (N = 29) grade children read aloud 96 noun words. Half of the words were simple mono-morphemic words and half were bi-morphemic derivations composed of a productive root and a morphemic pattern. In each list half of the words were presented in the transparent version of the script (with diacritic marks), and half in the non-transparent version (without diacritic marks). Our results show that in both groups, derived bi-morphemic words were identified more accurately than mono-morphemic words, but only for the transparent, pointed, script. For the un-pointed script the reverse was found, namely, that bi-morphemic words were read less accurately than mono-morphemic words, especially in second grade. Second grade children also read mono-morphemic words faster than bi-morphemic words. Finally, correlations with a standardized measure of morphological awareness were found only for second grade children, and only in bi-morphemic words. These results, showing greater morphological effects in second grade compared to fifth grade children suggest that for children raised in a language with a rich morphology, common and easily segmented morphemic units may be more beneficial for younger compared to older readers. Moreover, in contrast to the common hypothesis, our results show that morphemic segmentation does not compensate for the missing phonological information in a non-transparent orthography, but rather that morphological segmentation is most beneficial in the highly transparent script. These results are consistent with the idea that morphological and phonological segmentation processes occur simultaneously and do not constitute alternative pathways to visual word recognition.

When transparency is opaque: Effects of diacritic marks and vowel letters on dyslexic Hebrew readers.

The current study examined the effects of orthographic transparency and familiarity on brain mechanisms involved in word recognition in adult dyslexic Hebrew readers. We compared functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) brain activation in 21 dyslexic readers and 22 typical readers, and examined the effects of diacritic marks that provide transparent but less familiar information and vowel letters that increase orthographic transparency without compromising familiarity. Dyslexic readers demonstrated reduced activation in left supramarginal gyrus (SMG) as compared to typical readers, as well as different patterns of activation within the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). Furthermore, in contrast to typical readers, dyslexic readers did not show increased activation for diacritics in left temporo-parietal junction regions, associated with mapping orthography to phonology. Nevertheless, both groups showed the facilitation effect of vowel letters on regions associated with lexical-semantic access. Altogether the results suggest that while typical readers can compensate for the reduced familiarity of pointed words with increased reliance on decoding of smaller units, dyslexic readers do not, and therefore they show a higher cost.

Many ways to read your vowels--Neural processing of diacritics and vowel letters in Hebrew.

The current study examined the effect of orthographic transparency and familiarity on brain mechanisms involved in word recognition in adult Hebrew readers. We compared the effects of diacritics that provide transparent but less familiar information and vowel letters that increase orthographic transparency without compromising familiarity. Brain activation was measured in 18 adults during oral reading of single words, while manipulating the presence of diacritic marks, the presence of a vowel letter, and word length (3 vs. 4 consonants). We found opposite effects of diacritics and vowel letters on temporo-parietal regions associated with mapping orthography to phonology. The increase in activation for diacritic marks and the decrease in activation for vowel letters in these regions suggest that the greater familiarity of vowel letters compared to diacritics overrides the effect of orthographic transparency. Vowel letters also reduced activation in regions associated with semantic processing in unpointed words, and were thus distinct from the effect of an additional consonant. Altogether the results suggest that both orthographic transparency and familiarity contribute to word recognition.

Epitope mapping: the first step in developing epitope-based vaccines.

Antibodies are an effective line of defense in preventing infectious diseases. Highly potent neutralizing antibodies can intercept a virus before it attaches to its target cell and, thus, inactivate it. This ability is based on the antibodies' specific recognition of epitopes, the sites of the antigen to which antibodies bind. Thus, understanding the antibody/epitope interaction provides a basis for the rational design of preventive vaccines. It is assumed that immunization with the precise epitope, corresponding to an effective neutralizing antibody, would elicit the generation of similarly potent antibodies in the vaccinee. Such a vaccine would be a 'B-cell epitope-based vaccine', the implementation of which requires the ability to backtrack from a desired antibody to its corresponding epitope. In this article we discuss a range of methods that enable epitope discovery based on a specific antibody. Such a reversed immunological approach is the first step in the rational design of an epitope-based vaccine. Undoubtedly, the gold standard for epitope definition is x-ray analyses of crystals of antigen:antibody complexes. This method provides atomic resolution of the epitope; however, it is not readily applicable to many antigens and antibodies, and requires a very high degree of sophistication and expertise. Most other methods rely on the ability to monitor the binding of the antibody to antigen fragments or mutated variations. In mutagenesis of the antigen, loss of binding due to point modification of an amino acid residue is often considered an indication of an epitope component. In addition, computational combinatorial methods for epitope mapping are also useful. These methods rely on the ability of the antibody of interest to affinity isolate specific short peptides from combinatorial phage display peptide libraries. The peptides are then regarded as leads for the definition of the epitope corresponding to the antibody used to screen the peptide library. For epitope mapping, computational algorithms have been developed, such as Mapitope, which has recently been found to be effective in mapping conformational discontinuous epitopes. The pros and cons of various approaches towards epitope mapping are also discussed.

Herbicide-resistance conferred by expression of a catalytic antibody in Arabidopsis thaliana.

Engineering herbicide resistance in crops facilitates control of weed species, particularly those that are closely related to the crop, and may be useful in selecting lines that have undergone multiple transformation events. Here we show that herbicide-resistant plants can be engineered by designing an herbicide and expressing a catalytic antibody that destroys the herbicide in planta. First, we developed a carbamate herbicide that can be catalytically destroyed by the aldolase antibody 38C2. This compound has herbicidal activity on all three plant species tested. Second, the light chain and half of the heavy chain (Fab) of the catalytic antibody were targeted to the endoplasmic reticulum in two classes of Arabidopsis thaliana transformants. Third, the two transgenic plants were crossed to produce an herbicide-resistant F1 hybrid. The in vitro catalytic activity of the protein from F1 hybrids corroborates that catalytic antibodies can be constitutively expressed in transgenic plants, and that they can confer a unique trait.

Determination of plant resistance to carbamate herbicidal compounds inhibiting cell division and early growth by seed and plantlets bioassays.

Herbicide-resistant plants can be generated by either traditional breeding procedures or genetic engineering. Analyses of plant responses to a newly developed herbicide or the tolerance level of a newly developed plant line to a given herbicide are based on various bioassays. Here, we describe several methods for quantitative measurements of plants' responses to propham application, as a model herbicide of the carbamate family. Dose-response assays include seed germination and analyses of shoot and root elongation on paper. To better reflect the natural interaction between the plant, the soil and the herbicide, a protocol for germination and root elongation on sand is described. Finally, a more sensitive bioassay is based on plant growth on agar medium. The described protocols are simple, reproducible and can be easily adopted for a variety of plant species and for various herbicides. Plants' response to a given herbicide can be determined within a few weeks.

Role of color Doppler imaging in diagnosing and managing pregnancies complicated by placental chorioangioma.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the role of color Doppler imaging in the diagnosis and management of placental chorioangioma. METHODS: The medical records, sonographic reports, and sonograms of all pregnant women who had placental masses diagnosed in our sonography unit during the years 1992 through 2000 and had been evaluated using both gray-scale and color Doppler sonography were included in this study. Subjective evaluation of the amount and distribution of intralesional vascularity by color Doppler imaging was made in all cases. Cases of chorioangioma of the placenta were compared with cases of placental hemorrhage or subchorionic hematoma. The outcomes of the pregnancies were also recorded. RESULTS: Fifteen cases of placental masses were evaluated; 8 of them were identified as placental hemorrhage or subchorionic hematoma on the basis of the sonographic findings. The other 7 cases were identified prenatally as placental chorioangioma, at a mean menstrual age of 23 weeks and a mean maternal age of 29 years. The mean size of the tumor was 6.5 cm (range, 4-13 cm). All cases of chorioangioma showed either substantial internal vascularity or a large feeding vessel within the tumor. Three infants were delivered at term with favorable outcome; 2 of them demonstrated reduction of the intratumoral blood flow during follow-up. The other 4 cases were delivered at or before 32 weeks' menstrual age (1 intrauterine fetal death, 2 terminated pregnancies, and 1 normal infant). No case of placental hematoma demonstrated blood flow within the lesion or was associated with complications of the pregnancy. CONCLUSIONS: Color Doppler imaging helps differentiate placental chorioangioma from other placental lesions and may be useful in the prenatal follow-up of chorioangioma.