READING DEVELOPMENT IN CHILDREN: AN ELECTROPHYSIOLOGICAL INVESTIGATION

Open Access
- Author:
- Hardaway, Kelsey Christine
- Area of Honors:
- Communication Sciences and Disorders
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Maya Misra, Thesis Supervisor
Dr. Maya Misra, Thesis Supervisor
Dr. Carol Anne Miller, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- Reading Development
ERP
children - Abstract:
- This study utilized event-related potentials (ERPs) to explore reading development in children and the role of orthographic and phonological processing. Standardized tests were administered to two 11-year olds. The two subjects also participated in an ERP session where they performed a lexical decision task on a computer. The lexical decision task included word triplets consisting of real words (e.g., CLAP), pseudohomophones (PHs, e.g., KLAP), and pseudowords (PWs, e.g., BLAP). During the lexical decision task the children had to decide if the stimulus item presented was a real word or a non-word. It had been hypothesized that children would read relying much more on phonological codes and eventually would shift their reliance to orthographic information. This study attempted to determine if subjects who should be past the initial stages of reading development, but still developing as readers, show differences in ERP waveforms in the lexical decision task. Other studies have studied the pseudohomophone effects on reading in children but have not looked at ERP effects. ERP differences were noted between the two subjects. Despite their waveforms being different, each child showed a sensitivity to the differences between real words and nonwords and showed a slight pseudohomophone disadvantage. It could be possible that these two subjects are still in the adaptive process of relying on phonology over orthography of the printed words. Future research is necessary to confirm the patterns displayed in this experiment and explore the varying strategies in children while reading.