# Development of Real Time Spoken and Written Word Recognition: Neural Bases.

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF IOWA · 2020 · $510,823

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
Language and reading impairments affect 16%-20% of children. Deficits in even low-level skills like word
recognition persist through adulthood, and half of middle-school struggling readers show deficits in reading
single words. While words are a low-level language skill at these ages, they link phonology, orthography, and
meaning. Thus understanding how word recognition develops is crucial for remediating language and reading
disorders. This proposal is a revision to the funded Growing Words Project, which examines the development
of spoken and written word recognition during childhood. Growing Words uses eye-tracking to ask how word
recognition unfolds in real-time, from the moment a word is heard (or seen) to the moment it is recognized. Our
work suggests these real-time processes develop through adolescence, and children with language disorders
show a distinct profile of real-time processing. Growing Words asks how real-time processing in language and
reading develops from 1st to 6th grade. This study is testing 400 children longitudinally across two laboratories
(including an off campus lab to enhance diversity). Children undergo measures of language, reading, cognition
as well as eye-tracking measures of real-time language processing. Growing Words asks what causes a child
to become more automatic (e.g., vocabulary growth, executive function, reading skills) and what are the
consequences of better real-time word recognition for language and reading outcomes.
 This revision builds on Growing Words to examine structural properties of the brain as both a cause and
consequence of differences in real-time processing, language, reading and environmental factors. Prior grants,
offered a serendipitous opportunity to collect structural MRI and eye-tracking data on the same children. This
led to new analyses that discovered that static properties of the brain are correlated with processing at different
points in time and under different conditions. We thus leverage the infrastructure of Growing Words to
investigate the neural origins of real-time processing. A subset of Growing Words participants will undergo
structural MRI (measuring gray matter surface area and thickness), and diffusion weighted imaging (measuring
white matter coherence) at two point, two years apart. We combine these data with a multidimensional
characterization of language and reading, with eye-tracking data, and with measures of language/literacy input
to address three aims. First, we ask how the development of structural brain properties leads to development
of reading and language skills. Second, we identify structural properties of the brain in which development or
individual differences are associated with differences in real-time lexical processing. Finally, we ask how
structural properties of the brain are shaped by prior language and reading development, real-time processing
skills, and language and reading input in the environment. These aims provide insig...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10049800
- **Project number:** 3R01DC008089-10S1
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF IOWA
- **Principal Investigator:** Bob McMurray
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $510,823
- **Award type:** 3
- **Project period:** 2007-01-08 → 2023-11-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10049800

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10049800, Development of Real Time Spoken and Written Word Recognition: Neural Bases. (3R01DC008089-10S1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10049800. Licensed CC0.

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