---
license: mit
task_categories: [feature-extraction]
tags: [brain-alignment, fmri, rsa, developmental, null-result]
---

# Lytle et al. (2020) — LM brain-alignment results

Language-model / fMRI representational-alignment results for **Lytle et al. (2020)**:
orthographic, phonological and semantic word processing in school-aged children (8.7-15.5), auditory and visual

OpenNeuro accession **`ds002236`** · cohort: school-aged children, ages 8.7-15.5 · modality: auditory and visual
· tasks: Phon, Sem · cells: 6 · rows: 924

Layout follows [`BrainAlign/cdl-devai-results`](https://huggingface.co/datasets/BrainAlign/cdl-devai-results):
`by-model/<family>/{brain_alignment,checkpoints}.csv`, `overall/`,
`ceiling-analysis/`, `provenance_tier_ledger.json`.

## Result: alignment is not distinguishable from a random seed

5 trained families (pythia-1.4b-full, pythia-160m-full, pythia-1b-full, pythia-410m-full, pythia-70m-full) and 9 PARC noise-seed
baselines, scored identically. Cells where a real family exceeds all 9 noise
seeds: **0 of 30**, against **3.0 expected by chance**.

Pooled across all three developmental datasets: 9/130 observed vs 13.0 expected
(p = 0.91); per-cell means of real families vs noise seeds correlate at
**r = +0.863**; **83.9%** of variance is cell identity and **3.2%** model family.

## Interpretation

These RDMs have real inter-subject reliability (noise ceilings in
`ceiling-analysis/ceilings.csv`), but the upstream pipeline's **positive controls
fail on this dataset**. The claim supported here is *"no LM alignment is
detectable by this measurement"* — **not** "language models do not align with the
developing brain." Read this as a result about the benchmark.

Negative results are published here deliberately: the per-cell nulls and the
noise-seed baselines are the reusable part.