Poster C73, Wednesday, August 21, 2019, 10:45 am – 12:30 pm, Restaurant Hall
Auditory neural responses to native and foreign language syllables in typical readers and in children with reading difficulties
Najla Azaiez Zammit Chatti1, Otto Loberg1, Sari Ylinen2, Jarmo Hämäläinen1, Paavo Leppänen1;1University of Jyväskylä, Finland, 2University of Helsinki
The strong link between the auditory processing and the reading difficulties is still not fully understood especially in the foreign language learning context. In this study, we explore this link in school children with dysfluent reading and how could the auditory brain responses reflect the reading through their ability to perceive first and second language sounds. Brain event-related potentials (ERPs) of 112 sixth grade Finnish children were recorded with a high-density electroencephalography (EEG) system (128 electrodes) in two groups: 86 typical readers and 26 with reading deficits. Participants were exposed to foreign language stimuli (English) and to native language stimuli (Finnish) in an auditory oddball paradigm presented in two different blocks. One of these two blocks consisted of foreign syllables used as stimuli, /shoe/ as standard (80%), /shy/, and /she/ as deviant stimuli (10% each). Finnish phonologically matching syllables were used in the second block, /suu/ as standard (80%), /sai/ and /sii/ as deviant stimuli (10% each). Cluster-based permutation statistics for ERP waveforms and topographic maps were calculated between the different conditions and between groups. Our results show that the brain responses to the non-native syllables were different compared to the responses obtained with the native stimuli in each group. Overall, the ERP amplitudes and latencies were varying between the groups and also between the responses within and between groups to the Finnish and English syllables. There were also differences between the brain responses to the stimuli within the same language. Participants with dysfluent reading showed atypical brain activities. These atypical responses suggest less specific phonemic representations and more reliance on stimulus features during passive auditory processing.
Themes: Perception: Auditory, Speech Perception
Method: Electrophysiology (MEG/EEG/ECOG)