Fig. 3: RTPJ & DMPFC responses to ASL story task.
From: Reduced neural selectivity for mental states in deaf children with delayed exposure to sign language
a Standard boxplots (left) show the distribution of selectivity indices in RTPJ (top row) and DMPFC (bottom row) in native signing (NS; blue; RTPJ: n = 15; DMPFC: n = 12 (out of 16)), delayed signing (DS; orange; RTPJ: n = 8; DMPFC: n = 6 (out of 8)), and age-matched neurotypical hearing (gray; n = 28 6–10-year old) children, who completed an analogous fMRI story task in English. Center line reflects median, box reflects interquartile range (IQR), whiskers show first quartile/third quartile −/+ 1.5*IQR; dots show individual data points per participant; violin outline shows the distribution of data. Selectivity index was calculated as the average beta estimate to (Mental–Social/Mental–Physical)*100. Asterisk indicates that delayed signers had less selective RTPJ responses than native signers (two-sided non-parametric Mann–Whitney U test; W = 97, CI = [4.3, 53.6], P = 0.02). Bar plots (middle) show mean beta estimates by condition + /− SEM (Mental (red), Social (purple), Physical (blue)) in individually defined RTPJ (top) and DMPFC (bottom) ROIs in children; dots show individual data points per participant. The mental and physical conditions were used for individual ROI definition and are shown for visualization purposes only (and therefore do not have error bars). Scatterplots (right) show the selectivity index for RTPJ and DMPFC in NS (RTPJ: n = 15; DMPFC: n = 12) and DS children (RTPJ: n = 8; DMPFC: n = 6) by Z-scored age of ASL onset (x-axis). Asterisk indicates a significant effect of age of ASL onset on RTPJ selectivity among children (b = −0.47, t = −2.3, 95% CI = [−0.90, −0.05], P = 0.03; linear regression controlling for age and motion). b Scatterplots show the selectivity index for RTPJ and DMPFC in adults (RTPJ (top): n = 20 NS (blue), n = 16 DS (orange); DMPFC (bottom): n = 19 NS, n = 16 DS), by Z-scored age of ASL onset (x-axis). Z scores are used on x-axes for de-identification of data. Source data are provided as a Source Data file and at https://osf.io/kyu3f/.
