Publicaties
Stimulating preschoolers’ early literacy development using educational technology: A systematic literature review KU Leuven
Research interest in the potential of educational technology to support young children as they learn to read has significantly increased during the last decades. These studies typically adopt a media comparison approach (comparing learning with one instructional medium vs. another instructional medium) or a value-added approach (comparing learning with a standard version vs. one with an added feature). We aimed to systematically review both ...
Dynamics of cognitive predictors during reading acquisition in a sample of children overrepresented for dyslexia risk KU Leuven
Literacy acquisition is a complex process with genetic and environmental factors influencing cognitive and neural processes associated with reading. Previous research identified factors that predict word reading fluency (WRF), including phonological awareness (PA), rapid automatized naming (RAN), and speech-in-noise perception (SPIN). Recent theoretical accounts suggest dynamic interactions between these factors and reading, but direct ...
Myelin plasticity during early literacy training in at-risk pre-readers KU Leuven
A growing body of neuroimaging evidence shows that white matter can change as a result of experience and structured learning. Although the majority of previous work has used diffusion MRI to characterize such changes in white matter, diffusion metrics offer limited biological specificity about which microstructural features may be driving white matter plasticity. Recent advances in myelin-specific MRI techniques offer a promising opportunity to ...
Pulsatile modulation greatly enhances neural synchronization at syllable rate in children KU Leuven
Neural processing of the speech envelope is of crucial importance for speech perception and comprehension. This envelope processing is often investigated by measuring neural synchronization to sinusoidal amplitude-modulated stimuli at different modulation frequencies. However, it has been argued that these stimuli lack ecological validity. Pulsatile amplitude-modulated stimuli, on the other hand, are suggested to be more ecologically valid and ...
Neural synchronization and intervention in pre-readers who later on develop dyslexia KU Leuven
A growing number of studies has investigated temporal processing deficits in dyslexia. These studies largely focus on neural synchronization to speech. However, the importance of rise times for neural synchronization is often overlooked. Furthermore, targeted interventions, phonics-based and auditory, are being developed, but little is known about their impact. The current study investigated the impact of a 12-week tablet-based intervention. ...
Speech perception deficits and the effect of envelope-enhanced story listening combined with phonics intervention in pre-readers at risk for dyslexia KU Leuven
Developmental dyslexia is considered to be most effectively addressed with preventive phonics-based interventions, including grapheme-phoneme coupling and blending exercises. These intervention types require intact speech perception abilities, given their large focus on exercises with auditorily presented phonemes. Yet some children with (a risk for) dyslexia experience problems in this domain due to a poorer sensitivity to rise times, i.e., ...
Investigating the Impact of Early Literacy Training on White Matter Structure in Prereaders at Risk for Dyslexia KU Leuven
Recent prereading evidence demonstrates that white matter alterations are associated with dyslexia even before the onset of reading instruction. At the same time, remediation of reading difficulties is suggested to be most effective when provided as early as kindergarten, yet evidence is currently lacking on the early neuroanatomical changes associated with such preventive interventions. To address this open question, we investigated white ...
Myelin water fraction in relation to fractional anisotropy and reading in 10-year-old children KU Leuven
Diffusion-weighted imaging studies have repeatedly shown that white matter correlates with reading throughout development. However, the neurobiological interpretation of this relationship is constrained by the limited microstructural specificity of diffusion imaging. A critical component of white matter microstructure is myelin, which can be investigated noninvasively using MRI. Here, we examined the link between myelin water fraction (MWF) and ...