Differential effects of foreign language reading anxiety on the reading-related networks in the cerebellum and cerebrum

Reading in a foreign language has increasingly become an essential skill for a successful life. Compared to the native language, reading in a foreign language may induce negative feelings (such as anxiety) on a large scale. Multiple studies have reported that there is a negative relationship between reading anxiety and reading performance in a foreign language. But little is known about how foreign language reading anxiety affects reading performance; for example, which aspect of reading performance would be affected. Previous studies suggested that foreign language reading anxiety can affect reading performance via the neural activity of emotion-related regions. However, few studies explored whether and how foreign language reading anxiety affects reading-related networks. In the present study, we aimed to investigate this issue from the perspective of functional differentiation of the cerebellum and cerebrum. In the current study, brain images of forty-nine adults were acquired during the English rhyming judgment task via functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Reading networks in the cerebrum and the cerebellum were defined by regions showing significant activation in the reading tasks. We focused on the correlation between the regions in the reading networks and reading anxiety levels. The results are as follows: (1) The levels of foreign language reading anxiety rather than the general anxiety were significantly correlated with foreign language reading performance. (2) Foreign language reading anxiety showed a significant correlation with lexical processing effectiveness instead of lexical processing efficiency. (3) The fMRI results further demonstrated that foreign language reading anxiety may affect reading networks in the cerebrum and cerebellum, diversely. Specifically, the anxiety level was significantly and negatively correlated with the activation of the right cerebellar VI and bilateral cerebellar Crus I, which effect was absent in the cerebrum. However, we observed that reading anxiety was significantly associated with the strength of functional connectivity between the right supplementary motor area and the left superior parietal gyrus. Combining behavioral and fMRI experiments, the present study deeply revealed the cognitive and neural mechanisms of how foreign language reading anxiety affects foreign language reading performance as well as reading networks in the cerebrum and the cerebellum.