DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE-PROCESSING ERPS IN CHILDREN

本研究的长期目标是从电生理学和行为学的角度研究正常儿童和语言受损儿童的神经认知语言处理系统的发展，以确定5-8岁儿童阅读相关技能发展的身份和时间进程。一旦建立起来，这类知识就可以应用于阅读教学方法和为阅读障碍儿童设计干预措施。电生理方面，事件相关电位(ERPs)将被记录在多个大脑区域，正常情况下，李氏儿童处理旨在激活感觉和语言功能特定方面的刺激；行为方面，标准化阅读测试的分数将衡量阅读流利性。本研究拟通过三个事件相关电位实验来考察(1)同一正常儿童的听觉、视觉、语义和句法句子加工的发展及其与行为阅读流利性之间的关系；(2)用事件相关电位测量正常儿童的基本视觉、听觉和语音加工的发展，及其与行为阅读流利性的关系；(3)用事件相关电位测量黎族儿童的基本视觉、听觉和语音加工的发展，及其与阅读流利性和可能偏离正常发展过程的关系。

The broad, long-term objectives of the present research proposal are to electrophysiologically and behaviorally investigate the development of the neurocognitive language-processing system in normal and language- impaired (LI) children so as to establish the identity and timecourse of development of reading-related skills in 5- to 8-year-old beginning readers. Once established, this sort of knowledge can be applied to methods for teaching reading and to design of interventions for reading- disabled children. Electrophsiologically, event-related potentials (ERPs) will be recorded over multiple brain regions as normal and LI children process stimuli designed to activate specific aspects of sensory and language functions; behaviorally, scores on standardized reading tests will measure reading fluency. Three ERP experiments are proposed to investigate (1) the development of auditory and visual, semantic and syntactic sentence-processing in the same normal children and the relationship between ERP measures of these sorts of processes and behavioral reading fluency; (2) the development of basic visual, auditory, and phonological processes in normal children as measured by ERPs, and their relationship to behavioral reading fluency; and (3) the development of basic visual, auditory, and phonological processes in LI children as measured by ERPs, and their relationship to reading fluency and possible deviance from the course of normal development.