Cortical Responses to Chinese Phonemes in Preschoolers Predict Their Literacy Skills at School Age

ABSTRACT

We investigated whether preschoolers with poor phonological awareness (PA) skills had impaired cortical basis for detecting speech feature, and whether speech perception influences future literacy outcomes in preschoolers. We recorded ERP responses to speech in 52 Chinese preschoolers. The results showed that the poor PA group processed speech changes differentially compared to control group in mismatch negativity (MMN) and late discriminative negativity (LDN). Furthermore, speech perception in kindergarten could predict literacy outcomes after literacy acquisition. These suggest that impairment in detecting speech features occurs before formal reading instruction, and that speech perception plays an important role in reading development.

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by National Key Basic Research Program of China (2014CB846103), by Natural Science Foundation of China (31671126, 31611130107), by Beijing Municipal Science & Technology Commission (Z151100003915122), by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2017XTCX04), by the Interdiscipline Research Funds of Beijing Normal University, and by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (grant number P01 HD001994) to Haskins Laboratories.