How does the brain learn to read? Investigations combining neuroimaging with artificial orthography learning.

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The proposed research will investigate how the brain learns to read. Most words in English have straightforward pronunciations (habitat, grumpy, church). However, some words do not (colonel, chaos, was). There are two main theories for how we can read all these words. One suggests that different brain system represent typical letter-sound rules and exceptional pronunciations. The other argues that all words are read by the same system, and knowledge of word meanings helps us read exception words. I will adjudicate between these ideas by scanning people's brains while they learn to read new words. This will be the first study to look at brain activity during learning. This is vital to understanding how different brain mechanisms help us to learn different types of words. My first study will determine whether different brain regions are active when learning typical versus exception words. In my second study some of the novel words will have a meaning. This will enable me to see whether brain regions that process meaning information are active when learning words with exceptional spellings. This work will help develop models of learning to read. This will improve the quality of future research and contribute to optimising educational practice.