- 期刊
- OpenAccess
Effects of Age of Acquisition and Word Frequency on the Processing Bias of the Middle/Inferior Frontal Gyrus
並列摘要
As early as the year 2000, researchers had found that the activation peak of Chinese processing was in the middle part of the left frontal lobe (BA9); this area was less activated in studies of alphabetic writing; and even when there was activation, it was very weak. Since then, many Chinese studies have also reported activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus. However, the purpose of this research has mainly been focused on the semantic and phonological function of the middle frontal gyrus. The current study addressed the effects of the age of acquisition (AOA) and word frequency on the processing bias of the middle/inferior frontal gyrus using the homophone judgment task based on the high and low frequency Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese characters. The results showed that during homophonic judgments of high-frequency Cantonese characters, the left inferior frontal gyrus was activated; tasks with low-frequency Cantonese as well as high- and low-frequency Mandarin activated the left middle frontal gyrus (BA9 / 6). These results suggest that early developed, native spoken language is processed in the left inferior frontal gyrus, while late developed, written language is processed in the left middle frontal gyrus in a manner dependent on the AOA and not the frequency. These results also show that the functional correlations between the left inferior frontal gyrus, the middle frontal gyrus and the right hemisphere depend on the task and that different tasks involve different networks of functional correlation in the left or right hemisphere.