# Children with lower language skill engage additional brain mechanisms in both hemispheres during sentence comprehension

## TL;DR

Children with lower language skills use more brain areas in both hemispheres to understand sentences, possibly compensating with semantic strategies.

## Contribution

This study reveals how children with lower language skills engage additional brain mechanisms during sentence comprehension.

## Key findings

- Classifier accuracy in ROIs was around chance for distinguishing grammatical and morphologically incorrect sentences.
- Lower language skill correlated with higher classification accuracy in bilateral brain areas related to semantic and phonological processing.
- Children with lower language skills may use semantic compensation and rehearsal mechanisms for sentence comprehension.

## Abstract

Multi-voxel pattern analysis was used to determine whether a support vector machine (SVM) could distinguish between grammatically correct sentences and sentences with a morphological violation related to tense-marking in 7-year-old children (N = 92) undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. SVM classifier accuracy was examined in regions of interest (ROIs) related to phonological processing (inferior frontal gyrus, pars opercularis and posterior superior temporal gyrus) and semantic processing (inferior frontal gyrus, pars triangularis and posterior middle temporal gyrus) determined with independent functional localizers using sound and meaning judgments. In these ROIs, the classifier performed around chance indicating that grammatical sentences and sentences with a morphological violation have a similar underlying representation for the whole sample. We also investigated correlations of standardized measures of language skill with classifier accuracy in the ROIs and in the whole brain. Whole brain analyses showed lower skill was associated with higher classification accuracy in bilateral brain areas implicated in semantic processing, in articulation and phonological processing and in verbal working memory. Overall, children with lower language skill seem to use widespread mechanisms in both hemispheres for sentences comprehension, possibly indicating increasing use of rehearsal mechanisms and semantic compensation for detecting morphological errors.