title: Mismatch negativity (MMN) elicited by duration deviations in children with reading disorder, attention deficit or both.
abstract: According to several studies auditory discrimination as measured by mismatch negativity (MMN) is compromised in participants with reading disorder. However, studies on duration discrimination have produced conflicting findings [Baldeweg, T., Richardson, A., Watkins, S., Foale, C., & Gruzelier, J., 1999. Impaired auditory frequency discrimination in dyslexia detected with mismatch evoked potentials. Annals of Neurology, 4, 1-9; Corbera, S., Escera, C., & Artigas, J., 2006. Impaired duration mismatch negativity in developmental dyslexia. Neuroreport, 17, 1051-1055]. Auditory sensitivity has not been as actively investigated among children with attention deficit, although attention problems often co-occur with dyslexia. The present study is a reanalysis of MMN data gathered from control children and children with reading disorder (RD) and/or attention deficit (AD). In our previous analysis [Huttunen, T., Halonen, A., Kaartinen, J. & Lyytinen, H., 2007. Does mismatch negativity show differences in reading disabled children as compared to normal children and children with attention deficit? Developmental Neuropsychology, 31, 453-470.], the only significant difference between the groups was in the lateralization of the MMNs in the RD and the control group: the MMNs of the RD group were more pronounced over the left hemisphere, while those of the control group appeared larger over the right hemisphere. A reanalysis was conducted to study whether the group definition criteria and/or overlap of the attention and reading deficits in the AD group might have affected the results. For this purpose participants were divided to four groups: control children, children with RD, children with AD, and children with both RD and AD. MMN was elicited by duration deviations in a continuous sound. Significant differences were observed in the MMN peaks between the control group and all clinical groups: the MMNs were diminished in the right hemisphere in the RD group, in all frontal and central channels in the RD+AD group, and the MMN peaks appeared earlier in frontal channels in the AD group.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Jyväskylä, P.O. Box 35, FIN-40351, Jyväskylä, Finland. tihuttun@psyka.jyu.fi
authors.forename: Tiina
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Huttunen-Scott
authors.forename: Jukka
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kaartinen
authors.forename: Asko
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Tolvanen
authors.forename: Heikki
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Lyytinen
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D000293:Adolescent; D001289:Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D002648:Child; D003265:Contingent Negative Variation / Q000502:physiology*; D004410:Dyslexia / Q000503:physiopathology*; D004569:Electroencephalography / Q000379:methods; D005072:Evoked Potentials, Auditory / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male