Immature cortical responses to auditory stimuli in specific language impairment: evidence from ERPs to rapid tone sequences.
Event-related potentials (ERPs) to tone pairs and single tones were measured for 16 participants with specific language impairment (SLI) and 16 age-matched controls aged from 10 to 19 years The tone pairs were separated by an inter-stimulus interval (ISI) of 20, 50 or 150 ms. The intraclass correlation (ICC) was computed for each participant between the ERP to a single tone and the ERP to the tone pair. A high ICC indicates that the brain response to a tone pair is similar to that for a single tone. ICCs were significantly higher at short than at long ISIs. At 50-ms ISI, ICCs were higher for younger than older participants. Age and ISI interacted with SLI status: ERPs of older participants with SLI differed from age-matched controls, and resembled ERPs of younger controls, consistent with a theory of immature auditory processing in SLI.
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, UK. dorothy.bishop@psy.ox.ac.uk
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Bishop
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McArthur
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D001303:Auditory Cortex / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D002648:Child; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D007805:Language Development Disorders / Q000503:physiopathology*; D013997:Time Factors