PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
In the United States, nearly one in five older youth struggles with basic reading skills (NCES; PIAAC, 2019).
Because of their low literacy levels, these individuals are placed at greater risk for unemployment and poor health
outcomes compared to their typically developing peers (Miller, McCardle, & Hernandez, 2010). These struggles
with reading may be due to a brain-based difficulty in learning new words, which is a critical skill for reading and
language development (Perfetti, 2007). We have previously reported behavioral evidence that children and youth
with reading disabilities experience difficulties learning and remembering phonologically similar spoken
pseudowords (e.g., pibu in relation to pibo or dibu; Malins et al., 2020), which can be taken as evidence of
unstable phonological representations for newly learned words (Magnuson et al., 2011). Despite these previous
behavioral findings, we do not yet understand how language-related networks in the brain contribute to these
observed word learning difficulties, especially in older youth who have struggled with reading for many years.
The objective of this proposal is to use non-invasive brain stimulation (i.e., repetitive transcranial magnetic
stimulation, or rTMS) to evaluate a causal model of word learning and processing, thereby providing a better
understanding of its underlying neural mechanisms. In the proposed study, using a within-subjects design,
participants will complete a visual phonological discrimination task and spoken artificial lexicon learning and, as
well as a novel word retention task following application of rTMS (either active stimulation or sham) to a dorsal
stream node of the reading network in the brain. Participants will consist of two groups of learners between the
ages of 16 and 21: 20 older youth with typically developed reading abilities (OYTD), and 20 older youth with
reading difficulties (OYRD). We hypothesize that: (1) inhibition of the left dorsal stream will impact subsequent
learning, processing, and retention of phonologically similar pseudowords; (2) the impact of dorsal stream
inhibition on word learning behavior will be associated with baseline levels of variability in neural activity
(Hancock, Pugh, & Hoeft, 2017). For the OYTD group (Aim 1), we predict that dorsal stream inhibition will result
in slower phonological processing, slower growth in word learning accuracy, and poorer retention, specifically
for phonologically related pseudowords. In contrast, for the OYRD group (Aim 2), we predict that dorsal stream
inhibition will result in faster phonological processing and growth in word learning accuracy, as well as improved
retention specifically for phonologically related pseudowords. To better understand the nature of these effects,
we will perform exploratory analyses (Aim 3) to evaluate associations between baseline neural activation
variability during a functional magnetic resonance imaging task and individual differences in the magnitude of
modulatory effects observed in Aims 1 and 2. Completion of these aims will lay a foundation for future proposals
that will use rTMS as an adjunct to improving learning potential during treatment for persistent reading difficulties.
