title: The N400 in beginning readers.
abstract: In an event-related potentials study of brain-behavior relations during learning-to-read, girls in first grade viewed known words, unknown words, difficult words, and nonwords presented in list form. Participants were divided into low-ability and high-ability reading groups based on standardized test scores. During the 300- to 600-ms epoch, low-ability readers lacked a substantial N400 while high-ability readers evidenced a large, widely distributed negativity to all word types. During the 600- to 1,000-ms epoch, high-ability readers showed effects of repetition while low-ability readers did not. The findings indicate a less selective neurocognitive word-processing system in children as compared to adults and suggest that the N400 may serve as an oblique index of the automaticity of lower level processing.
authors.affiliation: Harvard University Graduate, School of Education, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. donna@uoregon.edu
authors.forename: Donna
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Coch
authors.forename: Phillip J
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Holcomb
mesh_terms: D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D002648:Child; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D011932:Reading; D012660:Semantics; D014825:Vocabulary