title: Atypical brain responses to sounds in children with specific language and reading impairments.
abstract: This study tested if children with specific language impairment (SLI) or children with specific reading disability (SRD) have abnormal brain responses to sounds. We tested 6- to 12-year-old children with SLI (N =19), children with SRD (N =55), and age-matched controls (N =36) for their passive auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) to tones, rapid tones, vowels and consonant-vowels. Thirty-eight percent of the children with SLI or SRD had less typical passive auditory ERPs in the N1-P2 window to sounds in general, rather than to tones, rapid tones, vowels or consonant-vowels specifically. The ERPs of these children were significantly 'flatter' in the N1-P2 region than normal. All the children with flatter ERPs in the N1-P2 region had poor non-word reading. A subgroup of these poor non-word readers also had poor non-word repetition. These findings support the hypothesis that impaired auditory processing is a causal risk factor for both SLI and SRD.
authors.affiliation: Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science, Macquarie University, NSW, Australia. genevieve.mcarthur@maccs.mq.edu.au
authors.forename: Genevieve
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: McArthur
authors.forename: Carmen
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Atkinson
authors.forename: Danielle
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Ellis
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D001921:Brain / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002648:Child; D004410:Dyslexia / Q000473:pathology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005072:Evoked Potentials, Auditory / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007805:Language Development Disorders / Q000473:pathology*; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D009862:Online Systems; D011932:Reading; D013016:Sound; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires