NEURAL INDICES OF PHONOLOGICAL DEFICITS IN POOR READERS

一个公认的事实是，糟糕的读者表现得更差 比他们的正常阅读同龄人在语音意识任务上， 听觉音素辨别、词汇通达与言语短时 记忆。越来越多的人一致认为，这些困难可能源于 从言语感知的单一缺陷影响到 语言的习得、表征和加工。尽管如此 在行为研究方面的主要进展，神经相关的 阅读过程受损的情况仍未确定。的总目标是 本研究旨在探讨言语知觉的本质和起源 阅读障碍在行为和神经方面的缺陷- 生理性(头皮记录的事件相关电位或代谢 成像措施)方法。为此目的，两组(每组n=20) 好读者和差读者，7-9岁，将在他们的 对呈现的各种语音和非语音刺激的感知 在听觉上和视觉上。更具体而言，我们建议研究 语音操作的影响(如语音相似度) 和识别率、辨别率、词汇率 在音节、单字和单字语境中的通达和回忆 嵌在句子里。神经激活模式对应于 行为差异将被描绘出来。总之，这里的目标是 是通过以下方式优化可用的巨大资源 行为和神经生理学测试设施来追踪 两组学生在阅读能力上的差异 大脑中的激活结构和模式。这一努力将 允许学习新的调查技术，以及 扩大自己的临床研究技能学习领域，包括 其他沟通障碍。

It is a well established fact that poor readers do significantly worse than their normal reading peers on tasks of phonological awareness, auditory phoneme discrimination, lexical access and verbal short-term memory. There is a growing consensus that these difficulties might stem from a unitary deficit in speech perception that impacts on the acquisition, representation and processing of language. Despite these major advances in behavioral research, the neural correlates of the impaired reading process remain undetermined. The general objective of this study is to investigate the nature and origin of speech perception deficits in reading disability using both behavioral and neuro- physiological (scalp-recorded event-related potentials or metabolic imaging measures) methods. To this end, two groups (n=20 per group) of good and poor readers, 7-9 years of age, will be compared on their perception of a variety of speech and nonspeech stimuli presented auditorily and visually. More specifically, we propose to examine the effects of phonetic manipulations (like degree of phonetic similarity) and rate of presentation on identification, discrimination, lexical access and recall in the context of syllables, single words and words embedded in sentences. Neural activation patterns corresponding to behavioral differences will be delineated. In summary, the goal here is to optimize on the tremendous resources available by way of behavioral and neurophysiological testing facilities to trace this difference in reading ability between the two groups to specific structures and patterns of activation in the brains. This endeavour will allow for the learning of new investigative techniques, as well as, the expansion of one's clinical research skills areas of study to include other communication disorders.