Electrophysiological Correlates of Reading Processes in School Age Children

Orthographic and phonological decoding skills are known to be important for learning to read. In an attempt to develop physiologically based screening tools which may identify children at risk for developing these skills, Auditory Event Related Potentials (ERP) were recorded from 84 nine-year-olds to a series of Probe tones while they were engaged in a series of orthographic, phonological, and spelling tasks. Electrodes were applied over both hemispheres at the frontal, temporal, and parietal regions of the scalp. Analyses focus on the relationship between hemisphere differences and children's performance on each of these tasks.