Development of Word-Level Reading and the N400 Component of the ERP

词级阅读和 ERP 的 N400 组件的开发

• 批准号: 7895344
• 负责人: Donna J Coch
• 金额: $ 7.9万
• 依托单位: DARTMOUTH COLLEGE
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2010-04-01 至 2012-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/7895344
• 关键词: Adult; American; Basic Science; Beds; Behavioral; Brain; Child; Comprehension; Data; Development; Educational Curriculum; Educational process of instructing; Event-Related Potentials; Failure; Frequencies; Government; Investigation; Knowledge; Lead; Learning; Legal; Letters; Linguistics; Measures; Neurocognitive; Orthography; Pattern; Process; Public Health; Reader; Reading; Reading Disabilities; Research; Risk; Schools; Scientific Advances and Accomplishments; Semantics; Stimulus; Students; System; Teaching Method; Testing; Time; Word Processing; behavior measurement; brain behavior; design; elementary school; fourth grade; indexing; insight; phonology; programs; public health relevance; relating to nervous system; remediation; response; skills; statistics

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): According to U.S. Government statistics, only about one-third of American fourth-graders are reading at a proficient level. Fourth grade is a pivotal year in elementary school as the curriculum typically requires students to shift from learning the basics of how to read to using established reading skills in an adult-like manner, to gain and build new knowledge. Behavioral data suggest that context-free recognition of simple, high frequency words is automatic by the fourth grade in typically developing readers but neural data are scarce. The proposed research with groups of third-, fourth-, and fifth-graders uses both standardized behavioral measures of various reading skills (orthographic, phonological, semantic, and comprehension) and a measure of neural word processing, the N400 component of the event-related potential (ERP) waveform. In previous studies with adults, the N400 has been shown to index both lexicosemantic and higher-level aspects of word processing. Here, the N400 will be recorded to simple real words (e.g., bed), pseudowords (e.g., bem), nonpronounceable letter strings (e.g., mbe), and strings of letter-like stimuli (e.g., BEM) presented in list form. It is predicted that only orthographically and phonologically legal stimuli (words and pseudowords) will elicit an N400 in older children/better readers, while all types of stimuli may elicit an N400 in younger children/poorer readers who have not yet automatized lower-level processes related to reading; consistent with this, correlations between the brain and behavioral measures are predicted to change over developmental time. This pattern of findings would indicate a neurocognitive word processing system that is more open to linguistic possibility and less selective in processing strings as word candidates in younger children/poorer readers, showing that some children in late elementary school indeed may not yet be processing word and word-like stimuli similarly to adults. Such insights might have implications for teaching and learning in the classroom, particularly for the many children at risk and struggling to read in late elementary school. In a broad, long-term view, such investigations of word-level processing using both neural and behavioral measures in children and adults will provide converging and constraining evidence that will lead to a better, multilevel understanding of the development of word processing systems that are at the core of reading skills. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Children who are poor readers are at risk for disengagement from school and eventual school failure, leading to other public health risks. Basic research that investigates the development of word reading skills in terms of both brain and behavior, as proposed here, can lead to a better understanding of the developmental course of reading skills. Such scientific advances in understanding can eventually be used in the classroom for better teaching and learning, and for design of remediation programs for poor readers.

描述（由申请人提供）：根据美国政府的统计数据，只有大约三分之一的美国四年级学生的阅读达到熟练水平。四年级是小学的关键一年，因为课程通常要求学生从学习如何阅读的基础知识转变为以成人的方式使用既定的阅读技巧，以获得和建立新的知识。行为数据表明，在正常发展的四年级学生中，对简单高频词的上下文无关识别是自动的，但神经数据很少。这项针对三年级、四年级和五年级学生的研究使用了各种阅读技能（正字法、语音、语义和理解）的标准化行为测量和神经文字处理测量，即事件相关电位（ERP）波形的N400组成部分。在之前对成年人的研究中，N400已经被证明可以索引词汇语义和更高层次的文字处理。在这里，N400将被记录到简单的真实单词（如bed）、假词（如bem）、不可发音的字母串（如mbe）和以列表形式呈现的类似字母的刺激串（如bem）。我们预测，只有正字法和音系上合法的刺激（单词和假词）会在年龄较大的儿童/较好的阅读者中引发N400，而所有类型的刺激都可能在年龄较小的儿童/较差的阅读者中引发N400，这些儿童/较差的阅读者尚未自动化阅读相关的低级过程；与此相一致的是，大脑和行为测量之间的相关性预计会随着发育时间而改变。这种发现模式表明，神经认知文字处理系统对语言可能性更开放，在处理较年幼的儿童/较差的读者的单词候选词时，对字符串的选择更少，这表明一些小学后期的儿童确实可能还没有像成年人那样处理单词和类单词刺激。这样的见解可能会对课堂上的教学产生影响，特别是对许多处于危险之中、在小学后期阅读困难的孩子。从长远的角度来看，使用神经和行为方法对儿童和成人的字级处理进行调查，将提供聚合和约束证据，从而更好地、多层次地理解作为阅读技能核心的字级处理系统的发展。