title: Behavioral and ERP evidence of word and pseudoword superiority effects in 7- and 11-year-olds.
abstract: In groups of 7-year-olds and 11-year-olds, event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded to briefly presented, masked letter strings that included real word (DARK/PARK), pronounceable pseudoword (DARL/PARL), unpronounceable nonword (RDKA/RPKA), and letter-in-xs (DXXX, PXXX) stimuli in a variant of the Reicher-Wheeler paradigm. Behaviorally, participants decided which of two letters occurred at a given position in each string (here, forced-choice alternatives D and P). Both groups showed evidence of behavioral word (more accurate choices for letters in words than in baseline nonwords or letter-in-xs) and pseudoword (more accurate choices for letters in pseudowords than in baseline nonwords or letter-in-xs) superiority effects. Electrophysiologically, 11-year-olds evidenced superiority effects on P150 and N400 peak amplitude, while 7-year-olds showed effects only on N400 amplitude. These findings suggest that the mechanisms underlying the observed behavioral superiority effects may be lexical in younger children but both sublexical and lexical in older children. These results are consistent with a lengthy developmental time course for automatic sublexical orthographic specialization, extending beyond the age of 11.
authors.affiliation: Reading Brains Lab, Department of Education, Dartmouth College, 3 Maynard Street, Raven House, HB 6103, Hanover, NH 03755, USA. donna.coch@dartmouth.edu
authors.forename: Donna
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Coch
authors.forename: Priya
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Mitra
authors.forename: Elyse
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: George
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002652:Child Behavior / Q000502:physiology* / Q000523:psychology; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods*; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D011932:Reading