DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE-PROCESSING ERPS IN CHILDREN

本研究计划的广泛、长期目标是从电生理学和行为学角度研究正常儿童和语言障碍儿童的神经认知语言处理系统的发展，以确定5- 8岁初读儿童阅读相关技能的发展特征和时间进程。一旦建立，这种知识可以应用于阅读教学方法和阅读障碍儿童干预措施的设计。在电生理学上，事件相关电位（ERP）将在多个大脑区域正常记录，LI儿童处理旨在激活感官和语言功能特定方面的刺激;在行为学上，标准化阅读测试的分数将衡量阅读流畅性。本研究采用三个ERP实验，分别考察了正常儿童的听觉、视觉、语义和句法加工的发展及其与行为阅读流畅性的关系：（2）正常儿童的视觉、听觉和语音基本加工的发展及其与行为阅读流畅性的关系;（3）用ERP测量LI儿童的基本视觉、听觉和语音过程的发展，以及它们与阅读流畅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.