ORCID Profile
0000-0003-1912-820X
Current Organisations
Uniwersytet Medyczny im Piastów Śląskich we Wrocławiu
,
Dyslexia SPELD Foundation
,
Macquarie University
,
Australian Catholic University
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Publisher: Wiley
Date: 04-04-2023
DOI: 10.1002/RRQ.498
Abstract: This study examined the potential of eye‐tracking as a tool for assessing reading comprehension. We administered three widely used reading comprehension tests with varying task demands to 79 typical adult readers while monitoring their eye movements. In the York Assessment of Reading for Comprehension (YARC), participants were given passages of text to read silently, followed by comprehension questions. In the Gray Oral Reading Test (GORT‐5), participants were given passages of text to read aloud, followed by comprehension questions. In the sentence comprehension subtest of the Wide Range Achievement Test (WRAT‐4), participants were asked to provide a missing word in sentences that they read silently (i.e., a cloze task). Linear models predicting comprehension scores from eye‐tracking measures yielded different results for the three tests. Eye‐tracking measures explained significantly more variance than reading‐speed data for the YARC (four times better), GORT (three times better), and the WRAT (1.3 time better). Importantly, there was no common strong predictor for all three tests. These results support growing recognition that reading comprehension tests do not measure the same cognitive processes, and that participants adapt their reading strategies to the tests' varying task demands. This study also suggests that eye‐tracking may provide a useful alternative for measuring reading comprehension.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 16-10-2019
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 11-2016
DOI: 10.1016/J.IJPSYCHO.2016.09.016
Abstract: The findings of a study by Cahn and Polich (2009) suggests that there is an effect of a meditative state on three event-related potential (ERP) brain markers of "low-level" auditory attention (i.e., acoustic representations in sensory memory) in expert meditators: the N1, the P2, and the P3a. The current study built on these findings by examining trait and state effects of meditation on the passive auditory mismatch negativity (MMN), N1, and P2 ERPs. We found that the MMN was significantly larger in meditators than non-meditators regardless of whether they were meditating or not (a trait effect), and that N1 litude was significantly attenuated during meditation in non-meditators but not expert meditators (an interaction between trait and state). These outcomes suggest that low-level attention is superior in long-term meditators in general. In contrast, low-level attention is reduced in non-meditators when they are asked to meditate for the first time, possibly due to auditory fatigue or cognitive overload.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 26-06-2019
DOI: 10.3758/S13415-019-00734-Y
Abstract: Recent neuroimaging studies have observed that the neural processing of social cues from a virtual reality character appears to be affected by "intentional stance" (i.e., attributing mental states, agency, and "humanness"). However, this effect could also be explained by in idual differences or perceptual effects resulting from the design of these studies. The current study used a new design that measured centro-parietal P250, P350, and N170 event-related potentials (ERPs) in 20 healthy adults while they initiated gaze-related joint attention with a virtual character ("Alan") in two conditions. In one condition, they were told that Alan was controlled by a human in the other, they were told that he was controlled by a computer. When participants believed Alan was human, his congruent gaze shifts, which resulted in joint attention, generated significantly larger P250 ERPs than his incongruent gaze shifts. In contrast, his incongruent gaze shifts triggered significantly larger increases in P350 ERPs than his congruent gaze shifts. These findings support previous studies suggesting that intentional stance affects the neural processing of social cues from a virtual character. The outcomes also suggest the use of the P250 and P350 ERPs as objective indices of social engagement during the design of socially approachable robots and virtual agents.
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
Date: 2012
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 05-2010
DOI: 10.1016/J.JNEUMETH.2010.02.024
Abstract: Electrical activity from the human brain can be recorded via electrodes on the scalp. It is important to reduce the impedance of each electrode to minimize unwanted noise in the recording. Electrode impedance can be improved by abrading the skin to remove dead skin cells. In this experiment, we tested if abrading the skin by combing the scalp leads to a significant reduction in electrode impedance. We compared the mean electrode impedance values of 20 subjects whose scalps were combed prior to electrode cap placement, with 20 subjects whose scalps were not combed. Combing significantly reduced the impedances at central, right, and left areas of the scalp. This finding supports the use of scalp combing to reduce the time and subject discomfort that can be associated with placing scalp electrodes. This is particularly important for experiments testing children.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 05-2013
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 02-2004
DOI: 10.1080/02643290342000087
Abstract: An influential theory attributes developmental disorders of language and literacy to low-level auditory perceptual difficulties. However, evidence to date has been inconsistent and contradictory. We investigated whether this mixed picture could be explained in terms of heterogeneity in the language-impaired population. In Experiment 1, the behavioural responses of 16 people with specific language impairment (SLI) and 16 control listeners (aged 10 to 19 years) to auditory backward recognition masking (ABRM) stimuli and unmasked tones indicated that a subgroup of people with SLI are less able to discriminate between the frequencies of sounds regardless of their rate of presentation. Further, these people tended to be the younger participants, and were characterised by relatively poor nonword reading. In Experiment 2, the auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) of the same groups to unmasked tones were measured. Listeners with SLI tended to have age-inappropriate waveforms in the N1-P2-N2 region, regardless of their auditory discrimination scores in Experiment 1. Together, these results suggest that SLI may be characterised by immature development of auditory cortex, such that adult-level frequency discrimination performance is attained several years later than normal.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 06-2005
DOI: 10.1016/J.COGBRAINRES.2004.12.007
Abstract: Perceptual asymmetry has been demonstrated behaviorally using frequency modulated (FM) stimuli: a modulated tone is easier to detect among unmodulated distracters than the converse. We demonstrate perceptual asymmetry for FM tones in the mismatch negativity (MMN) component of the event-related potential, regardless of whether the participant attends to the tones. These results suggest that perceptual asymmetry reflects the automatic activation of low-level feature detectors in the auditory system.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 17-07-2023
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 07-2018
DOI: 10.1016/J.IJPSYCHO.2018.05.003
Abstract: Music and language both rely on the processing of spectral (pitch, timbre) and temporal (rhythm) information to create structure and meaning from incoming auditory streams. Behavioral results have shown that interrupting a melodic stream with unexpected changes in timbre leads to reduced syntactic processing. Such findings suggest that syntactic processing is conditional on successful streaming of incoming sequential information. The current study used event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate whether (1) the effect of alternating timbres on syntactic processing is reflected in a reduced brain response to syntactic violations, and (2) the phenomenon is similar for music and language. Participants listened to melodies and sentences with either one timbre (piano or one voice) or three timbres (piano, guitar, and vibraphone, or three different voices). Half the stimuli contained syntactic violations: an out-of-key note in the melodies, and a phrase-structure violation in the sentences. We found smaller ERPs to syntactic violations in music in the three-timbre compared to the one-timbre condition, reflected in a reduced early right anterior negativity (ERAN). A similar but non-significant pattern was observed for language stimuli in both the early left anterior negativity (ELAN) and the left anterior negativity (LAN) ERPs. The results suggest that disruptions to auditory streaming may interfere with syntactic processing, especially for melodic sequences.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 05-08-2020
Abstract: Eye movements provide important signals for joint attention. However, those eye movements that indicate bids for joint attention often occur among non-communicative eye movements. This study investigated the influence of these non-communicative eye movements on subsequent joint attention responsivity. Participants played an interactive game with an avatar which required both players to search for a visual target on a screen. The player who discovered the target used their eyes to initiate joint attention. We compared participants’ saccadic reaction times (SRTs) to the avatar’s joint attention bids when they were preceded by non-communicative eye movements that predicted the location of the target (Predictive Search), did not predict the location of the target (Random Search), and when there were no non-communicative eye gaze movements prior to joint attention (No Search). We also included a control condition in which participants completed the same task, but responded to a dynamic arrow stimulus instead of the avatar’s eye movements. For both eye and arrow conditions, participants had slower SRTs in Random Search trials than No Search and Predictive Search trials. However, these effects were smaller for eyes than for arrows. These data suggest that joint attention responsivity for eyes is relatively stable to the presence and predictability of spatial information conveyed by non-communicative gaze. Contrastingly, random sequences of dynamic arrows had a much more disruptive impact on subsequent responsivity compared with predictive arrow sequences. This may reflect specialised social mechanisms and expertise for selectively responding to communicative eye gaze cues during dynamic interactions, which is likely facilitated by the integration of ostensive eye contact cues.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 05-2013
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 23-01-2018
Publisher: Acoustical Society of America (ASA)
Date: 03-2001
DOI: 10.1121/1.1338559
Abstract: The auditory backward recognition masking (ABRM) and intensity discrimination (ID) thresholds of children with a specific language impairment and poor reading (SLI-poor readers), children with an SLI and average reading (SLI-average readers), children with a specific reading disability and average spoken language skills (SRD-average language), and children with normal spoken and written language (controls) were estimated with “child-friendly” psychophysical tasks. The pattern of ABRM and ID scores suggests that a subset of children with concomitant oral language and reading impairments has poor ABRM thresholds, and that a subgroup of children with an SLI or SRD has poorer ID thresholds than controls. The latter result warns against using rapid auditory processing tasks that do not actively control for auditory discrimination ability. Further, some unusually poor ABRM scores and ID scores question the validity of extreme scores produced by children on psychophysical tasks. Finally, the poor oral language scores of many of the children who had impaired reading highlight the need to test the oral language skills of SRD s les to ascertain how homogeneous and specifically disabled they really are.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 09-2005
DOI: 10.1016/J.BANDL.2005.01.002
Abstract: McArthur and Bishop (2004) found that people with specific language impairment (SLI) up to 14 years of age have poor behavioural frequency discrimination (FD) thresholds for 25-ms pure tones, while people with SLI upto 20 years of age have abnormal auditory N1--P2--N2 event-related potential (ERP) responses to the same tones. In the present study, we extended these findings to more complex non-speech and speech sounds by comparing younger (around 13 years) and older (around 17 years) teenagers with SLI and controls for their behavioural FD thresholds and N1-P2 ERPs to 25 and 250-ms pure tones, vowels, and non-harmonic complex tones. We found that a subgroup of people with SLI had abnormal responses to tones and vowels at the level of behaviour and the brain, and that poor processing was associated with the spectral complexity of auditory stimuli rather than their phonetic significance. We suggest that both the age of listeners and the sensitivity of psychoacoustic tasks to age-related changes in auditory skills may be crucial factors in studies of sound processing in SLI.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 05-2018
DOI: 10.1016/J.IJPSYCHO.2018.03.003
Abstract: Recent studies link meditation expertise with enhanced low-level attention, measured through auditory event-related potentials (ERPs). In this study, we tested the reliability and validity of a recent finding that the N1 ERP in first-time meditators is smaller during meditation than non-meditation - an effect not present in long-term meditators. In the first experiment, we replicated the finding in first-time meditators. In two subsequent experiments, we discovered that this finding was not due to stimulus-related instructions, but was explained by an effect of the order of conditions. Extended exposure to the same tones has been linked with N1 decrement in other studies, and may explain N1 decrement across our two conditions. We give ex les of existing meditation and ERP studies that may include similar condition order effects. The role of condition order among first-time meditators in this study indicates the importance of counterbalancing meditation and non-mediation conditions in meditation studies that use event-related potentials.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 15-10-2012
DOI: 10.1111/J.1469-8986.2012.01472.X
Abstract: The aim of this study was to determine if duration-related stress in speech and music is processed in a similar way in the brain. To this end, we tested 20 adults for their abstract mismatch negativity (MMN) event-related potentials to two duration-related stress patterns: stress on the first syllable or note (long-short), and stress on the second syllable or note (short-long). A significant MMN was elicited for both speech and music except for the short-long speech stimulus. The long-short stimuli elicited larger MMN litudes for speech and music compared to short-long stimuli. An extra negativity-the late discriminative negativity (LDN)-was observed only for music. The larger MMN litude for long-short stimuli might be due to the familiarity of the stress pattern in speech and music. The presence of LDN for music may reflect greater long-term memory transfer for music stimuli.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 31-03-2017
DOI: 10.1038/S41539-017-0008-3
Abstract: A substantial proportion of children struggle to learn to read. This not only impairs their academic achievement, but increases their risk of social, emotional, and mental health problems. In order to help these children, reading scientists have worked hard for over a century to better understand the nature of reading difficulties and the people who have them. The aim of this perspective is to outline some of the things that we have learned so far, and to provide a framework for considering the causes of reading difficulties and the most effective ways to treat them.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 08-2015
DOI: 10.1016/J.BANDC.2015.06.001
Abstract: During interactions with other people, we constantly evaluate the significance of our social partner's gaze shifts in order to coordinate our behaviour with their perspective. In this study, we used event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate the neural time course of evaluating gaze shifts that signal the success of self-initiated joint attention bids. Nineteen participants were allocated to a "social" condition, in which they played a cooperative game with an anthropomorphic virtual character whom they believed was controlled by a human partner in a nearby laboratory. Participants were required to initiate joint attention towards a target. In response, the virtual partner shifted his gaze congruently towards the target-thus achieving joint attention--or incongruently towards a different location. Another 19 participants completed the same task in a non-social "control" condition, in which arrows, believed to be controlled by a computer program, pointed at a location that was either congruent or incongruent with the participant's target fixation. In the social condition, ERPs to the virtual partner's incongruent gaze shifts evoked significantly larger P350 and P500 peaks compared to congruent gaze shifts. This P350 and P500 morphology was absent in both the congruent and incongruent control conditions. These findings are consistent with previous claims that gaze shifts differing in their social significance modulate central-parietal ERPs 350 ms following the onset of the gaze shift. Our control data highlights the social specificity of the observed P350 effect, ruling out explanations pertaining to attention modulation or error detection.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 04-2008
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 03-06-2022
DOI: 10.1002/ACP.3970
Abstract: There is a reliable association between poor reading and anxiety, but we do not completely understand the specifics of this relationship. The current study included a s le of children ( N = 284 M age = 9.30, SD age = 1.31) who completed a reading (word, nonword, and text reading accuracy, word, nonword, and text reading fluency, passage reading comprehension) and anxiety (social anxiety, generalized anxiety, separation anxiety, physical injury fears hobias, panic, obsessive compulsive symptoms) assessment. Analyses included bivariate and partial correlations, principal components analysis, and hierarchical clustering. We found a very tentative suggestion in the data that there may be a specific yet weak association between reading accuracy and social anxiety. The clinical implications and directions for future research are discussed.
Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Date: 05-12-2022
DOI: 10.1101/2022.12.04.519056
Abstract: Commercial electroencephalography (EEG) devices have become increasingly available over the last decade. These devices have been used in a wide variety of fields ranging from engineering to cognitive neuroscience. The aim of this study was to chart peer-review articles that used currently available consumer-grade EEG devices to collect neural data. We provide an overview of the research conducted with these relatively more affordable and user-friendly devices. We also inform future research by exploring the current and potential scope of consumer-grade EEG. We followed a five-stage methodological framework for a scoping review that included a systematic search using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) guidelines. We searched the following electronic databases: PsycINFO, MEDLINE, Embase, Web of Science, and IEEE Xplore. We charted study data according to application (BCI, experimental research, validation, signal processing, and clinical) and location of use as indexed by the first author’s country. We identified 916 studies that used data recorded with consumer-grade EEG: 531 were reported in journal articles and 385 in conference papers. Emotiv devices were most used, followed by the NeuroSky MindWave, OpenBCI, interaXon Muse, and MyndPlay Mindband. The most common use was for brain-computer interfaces, followed by experimental research, signal processing, validation, and clinical purposes. Consumer-grade EEG has proven to be a useful tool for neuroscientific research and will likely continue to be used well into the future. Our study provides a comprehensive review of their application, as well as future directions for researchers who wish to use these devices.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 23-09-2019
Publisher: PeerJ
Date: 24-02-2021
DOI: 10.7717/PEERJ.10987
Abstract: A recent systematic review has reported that poor reading is reliably associated with anxiety. However, we currently lack evidence-based intervention for children who have both poor reading and anxiety (PRAX). In this study, we tested a new PRAX intervention in 8- to 12-year-old children using a double-baseline intervention case series design. Analyses of both group and in idual data revealed that 12 weeks of PRAX intervention significantly improved children’s reading and spelling accuracy, and significantly reduced both anxiety disorders and symptoms. These results support PRAX intervention as a treatment for comorbid reading and anxiety problems in children and pave the way to a randomised controlled trial.
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Date: 1999
DOI: 10.2307/1423655
Publisher: PeerJ
Date: 16-03-2020
DOI: 10.7717/PEERJ.8772
Abstract: The aims of this systematic review and meta-analyses were to determine if there is a statistically reliable association between poor reading and poor self-concept, and if such an association is moderated by domain of self-concept, type of reading impairment, or contextual factors including age, gender, reading instruction, and school environment. We searched 10 key databases for published and unpublished studies, as well as reference lists of included studies, and studies that cited included studies. We calculated standardised mean differences (SMDs) and 95% confidence intervals for one primary outcome (average self-concept) and 10 secondary outcomes (10 domains of self-concept). We assessed the data for risk of bias, heterogeneity, sensitivity, reporting bias, and quality of evidence. Thirteen studies with 3,348 participants met our selection criteria. Meta-analyses revealed statistically significant SMDs for average self-concept (−0.57) and five domains of self-concept (reading/writing/spelling: −1.03 academic: −0.67 math: −0.64 behaviour: −0.32 physical appearance: −0.28). The quality of evidence for the primary outcome was moderate, and for secondary outcomes was low, due to lack of data. These outcomes suggest a probable moderate association between poor reading and average self-concept a possible strong association between poor reading and reading-writing-spelling self-concept and possible moderate associations between poor reading and self-concept in the self-concept domains of academia, mathematics, behaviour, and physical appearance.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 12-2012
DOI: 10.1016/J.HEARES.2012.10.005
Abstract: Adolescence is a time of great change in the brain in terms of structure and function. It is possible to track the development of neural function across adolescence using auditory event-related potentials (ERPs). We measured passive auditory ERPs to pure tones and consonant-vowel (CV) syllables in 90 children and adolescents aged 10-18 years, as well as 10 adults. With one exception, the pattern of results were the same for tones and speech: Across adolescence, the P1 ERP peak decreased in size and latency, the N1 increased in size and decreased in latency, the P2 remained constant in size, and the N2 decreased in size but remained stable across adolescence. The exception was P2 latency, which increased for speech but remained stable for tones. Interesting step-like changes were observed for N1 latency for both tones and speech stimuli in 15- to 16-year-olds. These may stem from rapid hormonal changes that affect neurotransmitter activity of the ERP-generating neurons.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 03-2013
DOI: 10.1016/J.NEUROPSYCHOLOGIA.2012.12.015
Abstract: We examined central auditory processing in typically- and atypically-developing readers. Concurrent EEG and MEG brain measurements were obtained from a group of 16 children with dyslexia aged 8-12 years, and a group of 16 age-matched children with normal reading ability. Auditory responses were elicited using 500ms duration broadband noise. These responses were strongly lateralized in control children. Children with dyslexia showed significantly less lateralisation of auditory cortical functioning, and a different pattern of development of auditory lateralization with age. These results provide further evidence that the core neurophysiological deficit of dyslexia is a problem in the balance of auditory function between the two hemispheres.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 16-11-2020
DOI: 10.1017/S135561772000106X
Abstract: Reading difficulties are one of the most significant challenges for children with neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1). The aims of this study were to identify and categorize the types of reading impairments experienced by children with NF1 and to establish predictors of poor reading in this population. Children aged 7–12 years with NF1 ( n = 60) were compared with typically developing children ( n = 36). Poor word readers with NF1 were classified according to impairment type (i.e., phonological, surface, mixed), and their reading subskills were compared. A hierarchical multiple regression was conducted to identify predictors of word reading. Compared to controls, children with NF1 demonstrated significantly poorer literacy abilities. Of the 49 children with NF1 classified as poor readers, 20 (41%) were classified with phonological dyslexia, 24 (49%) with mixed dyslexia, and 5 (10%) fell outside classification categories. Children with mixed dyslexia displayed the most severe reading impairments. Stronger working memory, better receptive language, and fewer inattentive behaviors predicted better word reading skills. The majority of children with NF1 experience deficits in key reading skills which are essential for them to become successful readers. Weaknesses in working memory, receptive language, and attention are associated with reading difficulties in children with NF1.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 05-02-2010
DOI: 10.1002/WCS.16
Abstract: In this article, we review research into the underlying deficits associated with the failure to learn to read normally, or developmental dyslexia . We focus on the heterogeneity within this broad category of disorder and on the relationship between the proposed deficits and the acquisition of specific kinds of reading skill. We also distinguish between ‘high‐level’ cognitive or language deficits associated with developmental dyslexia and ‘low‐level’ perceptual or neurological deficits. We conclude that the mixed and sometimes contradictory sets of findings associated with most of the proposed deficits reveal something important: that there is no single cause of developmental dyslexia and that it is likely that multiple causes interact in complex ways to impair reading acquisition. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. This article is categorized under: Psychology Brain Function and Dysfunction Neuroscience Behavior
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 07-2009
Publisher: PeerJ
Date: 09-11-2016
DOI: 10.7717/PEERJ.2669
Abstract: There is evidence that poor readers are at increased risk for various types of low self-concept—particularly academic self-concept. However, this evidence ignores the heterogeneous nature of poor readers, and hence the likelihood that not all poor readers have low self-concept. The aim of this study was to better understand which types of poor readers have low self-concept. We tested 77 children with poor reading for their age for four types of self-concept, four types of reading, three types of spoken language, and two types of attention. We found that poor readers with poor attention had low academic self-concept, while poor readers with poor spoken language had low general self-concept in addition to low academic self-concept. In contrast, poor readers with typical spoken language and attention did not have low self-concept of any type. We also discovered that academic self-concept was reliably associated with reading and receptive spoken vocabulary, and that general self-concept was reliably associated with spoken vocabulary. These outcomes suggest that poor readers with multiple impairments in reading, language, and attention are at higher risk for low academic and general self-concept, and hence need to be assessed for self-concept in clinical practice. Our results also highlight the need for further investigation into the heterogeneous nature of self-concept in poor readers.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 03-2017
DOI: 10.1016/J.NEUBIOREV.2016.12.022
Abstract: Social interactions are, by their nature, dynamic and reciprocal - your behaviour affects my behaviour, which affects your behaviour in return. However, until recently, the field of social cognitive neuroscience has been dominated by paradigms in which participants passively observe social stimuli from a detached "third person" perspective. Here we consider the unique conceptual and methodological challenges involved in adopting a "second person" approach whereby social cognitive mechanisms and their neural correlates are investigated within social interactions (Schilbach et al., 2013). The key question for researchers is how to distil a complex, intentional interaction between two in iduals into a tightly controlled and replicable experimental paradigm. We explore these issues within the context of recent investigations of joint attention - the ability to coordinate a common focus of attention with another person. We review pioneering neurophysiology and eye-tracking studies that have begun to address these issues offer recommendations for the optimal design and implementation of interactive tasks, and discuss the broader implications of interactive approaches for social cognitive neuroscience.
Publisher: PeerJ
Date: 11-08-2020
DOI: 10.7717/PEERJ.9713
Abstract: Previous work has validated consumer-grade electroencephalography (EEG) systems for use in research. Systems in this class are cost-effective and easy to set up and can facilitate neuroscience outside of the laboratory. The aim of the current study was to determine if a new consumer-grade system, the Emotiv EPOC Saline Flex, was capable of capturing research-quality data. The Emotiv system was used simultaneously with a research-grade EEG system, Neuroscan Syn s2, to collect EEG data across 16 channels during five well-established paradigms: (1) a mismatch negativity (MMN) paradigm that involved a passive listening task in which rare deviant (1,500 Hz) tones were interspersed amongst frequent standard tones (1,000 Hz), with instructions to ignore the tones while watching a silent movie (2) a P300 paradigm that involved an active listening task in which participants were asked to count rare deviant tones presented amongst frequent standard tones (3) an N170 paradigm in which participants were shown images of faces and watches and asked to indicate whether the images were upright or inverted (4) a steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP) paradigm in which participants passively viewed a flickering screen (15 Hz) for 2 min and (5) a resting state paradigm in which participants sat quietly with their eyes open and then closed for 3 min each. The MMN components and P300 peaks were equivalent between the two systems (BF10 = 0.25 and BF10 = 0.26, respectively), with high intraclass correlations (ICCs) between the ERP waveforms ( .81). Although the N170 peak values recorded by the two systems were different (BF10 = 35.88), ICCs demonstrated that the N170 ERP waveforms were strongly correlated over the right hemisphere (P8 0.87–0.97), and moderately-to-strongly correlated over the left hemisphere (P7 0.52–0.84). For the SSVEP, the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) was larger for Neuroscan than Emotiv EPOC Flex (19.94 vs. 8.98, BF10 = 51,764), but SNR z -scores indicated a significant brain response at the stimulus frequency for both Neuroscan ( z = 12.47) and Flex ( z = 11.22). In the resting state task, both systems measured similar alpha power (BF10 = 0.28) and higher alpha power when the eyes were closed than open (BF10 = 32.27). The saline version of the Emotiv EPOC Flex captures data similar to that of a research-grade EEG system. It can be used to measure reliable auditory and visual research-quality ERPs. In addition, it can index SSVEP signatures and is sensitive to changes in alpha oscillations.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 17-12-2018
DOI: 10.1038/S41598-018-36076-X
Abstract: Music and language are complex hierarchical systems in which in idual elements are systematically combined to form larger, syntactic structures. Suggestions that music and language share syntactic processing resources have relied on evidence that syntactic violations in music interfere with syntactic processing in language. However, syntactic violations may affect auditory processing in non-syntactic ways, accounting for reported interference effects. To investigate the factors contributing to interference effects, we assessed recall of visually presented sentences and word-lists when accompanied by background auditory stimuli differing in syntactic structure and auditory distraction: melodies without violations, scrambled melodies, melodies that alternate in timbre, and environmental sounds. In Experiment 1, one-timbre melodies interfered with sentence recall, and increasing both syntactic complexity and distraction by scrambling melodies increased this interference. In contrast, three-timbre melodies reduced interference on sentence recall, presumably because alternating instruments interrupted auditory streaming, reducing pressure on long-distance syntactic structure building. Experiment 2 confirmed that participants were better at discriminating syntactically coherent one-timbre melodies than three-timbre melodies. Together, these results illustrate that syntactic processing and auditory streaming interact to influence sentence recall, providing implications for theories of shared syntactic processing and auditory distraction.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 05-2011
DOI: 10.1016/J.CLINPH.2010.08.014
Abstract: To determine if an audible movie soundtrack has a degrading effect on the auditory P1, N1, P2, N2, or mismatch negativity (MMN) event-related potentials (ERPs) in children, adolescents, or adults. The auditory ERPs of 36 children, 32 young adolescents, 19 older adolescents, and 10 adults were measured while they watched a movie in two conditions: with an audible soundtrack and with a silent soundtrack. In children and adolescents, the audible movie soundtrack had a significant impact on litude, latency or split-half reliability of the N1, P2, N2, and MMN ERPs. The audible soundtrack had minimal impact on the auditory ERPs of adults. These findings challenge previous claims that an audible soundtrack does not degrade the auditory ERPs of children. Further, the reliability of the MMN is poorer than P1, N1, P2, and N2 peaks in both sound-off and sound-on conditions. Researchers should be cautious about using an audible movie soundtrack when measuring auditory ERPs in younger listeners.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 13-06-2021
DOI: 10.1002/RRQ.426
Abstract: There is good evidence for an association between poor reading and anxiety, but the mechanisms responsible for this association are currently unknown. In this study, we used structural equation modeling of four large longitudinal databases from the United Kingdom ( n = 7,870), the United States ( n s = 8,001 and 7,160), and Australia ( n = 768) to explore relations between reading and emotional health across childhood. We found that emotional health at age 5 was not related to reading at age 7 but that reading at 7 was related to emotional health at age 9 or 11. We also found that reading, behavior, and attention may be related across development. These findings suggest a working hypothesis that poor reading may have an influence on emotional health rather than vice versa.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 14-11-2018
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 12-12-2012
Publisher: PeerJ
Date: 19-02-2013
DOI: 10.7717/PEERJ.38
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 2007
DOI: 10.1002/DYS.355
Abstract: Reynolds and Nicolson (Dyslexia, 2007 13: 78-96) claim to show that the 'dyslexia dyspraxia attention-deficit treatment' (DDAT) benefits children with reading difficulties. However, Rack, Snowling, Hulme, and Gibbs (Dyslexia, 2007 13: 97-104) argue that because this study did not include an untrained control group then 'all that needs to be postulated to explain the results reported is that children improve their scores on the DST screening tests simply as a result of repeated testing on the same activities' (p. 102). How likely is it that the linguistic gains reported by Reynolds and Nicolson (Dyslexia, 2007 13: 78-96) are due to test-retest effects? The results of previous exercise- and auditory-based treatment studies that included an untrained control group suggest that test-retest effects explain gains on around 50% of real-word reading tests, 33% of phonological recoding tests, 33% of phonological awareness tests, 17-25% of spoken language tests, and 15% of spelling tests. In addition, longer periods of time between test and retest sessions are associated with test-retest effects on measures of reading but not spoken language. These findings suggest that two of the four linguistic gains reported by Reynolds and Nicolson (Dyslexia, 2007 13: 78-96) are due to test-retest effects (phonemic segmentation and working memory). The remaining two tests are measures of spoken language and not reading. Hence, the data reported by Reynolds and Nicolson (Dyslexia, 2007 13: 78-96) are not sufficient to support DDAT as an effective treatment for children with reading difficulties.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 20-04-2018
Abstract: Joint attention – the ability to coordinate attention with a social partner – is critical for social communication, learning and the regulation of interpersonal relationships. Infants and young children with autism demonstrate impairments in both initiating and responding to joint attention bids in naturalistic settings. However, little is known about joint attention abilities in adults with autism. Here, we tested 17 autistic adults and 17 age- and nonverbal intelligence quotient–matched controls using an interactive eye-tracking paradigm in which participants initiated and responded to joint attention bids with an on-screen avatar. Compared to control participants, autistic adults completed fewer trials successfully. They were also slower to respond to joint attention bids in the first block of testing but performed as well as controls in the second block. There were no group differences in responding to spatial cues on a non-social task with similar attention and oculomotor demands. These experimental results were mirrored in the subjective reports given by participants, with some commenting that they initially found it challenging to communicate using eye gaze, but were able to develop strategies that allowed them to achieve joint attention. Our study indicates that for many autistic in iduals, subtle difficulties using eye-gaze information persist well into adulthood.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 02-2013
DOI: 10.1080/02643294.2013.784192
Abstract: The aim of this study was to better understand the heterogeneity of developmental dyslexia by identifying the most common deficits in the reading systems of children with dyslexia with different poor word reading profiles. We classified the word reading profiles of 138 children with developmental dyslexia using nonword and irregular-word reading tests and then used independent experimental tests to explore the cognitive deficits within their word reading systems. The most common deficit associated with primary sublexical impairment (i.e., poor nonword reading) was poor grapheme-phoneme conversion (GPC) knowledge. The most common deficits associated with primary lexical impairment (i.e., poor irregular-word reading) were an impaired orthographic lexicon plus impaired links between this lexicon and the phonological lexicon and semantic knowledge. Finally, the most common deficits associated with mixed reading impairment (i.e., poor nonword reading and poor irregular-word reading) were poor GPC knowledge, an impaired orthographic lexicon, poor links between this lexicon and the phonological lexicon and semantic knowledge, and poor phonological output. We discuss the implications of these findings for theories of reading and for the diagnosis and treatment of dyslexia.
Publisher: ACM
Date: 08-08-2018
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 06-08-2016
DOI: 10.1111/DESC.12423
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
Date: 07-09-2023
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 02-01-2022
Publisher: PeerJ
Date: 17-01-2017
DOI: 10.7717/PEERJ.2899
Abstract: The successful navigation of social interactions depends on a range of cognitive faculties—including the ability to achieve joint attention with others to share information and experiences. We investigated the influence that intention monitoring processes have on gaze-following response times during joint attention. We employed a virtual reality task in which 16 healthy adults engaged in a collaborative game with a virtual partner to locate a target in a visual array. In the Search task, the virtual partner was programmed to engage in non-communicative gaze shifts in search of the target, establish eye contact, and then display a communicative gaze shift to guide the participant to the target. In the NoSearch task, the virtual partner simply established eye contact and then made a single communicative gaze shift towards the target (i.e., there were no non-communicative gaze shifts in search of the target). Thus, only the Search task required participants to monitor their partner’s communicative intent before responding to joint attention bids. We found that gaze following was significantly slower in the Search task than the NoSearch task. However, the same effect on response times was not observed when participants completed non-social control versions of the Search and NoSearch tasks, in which the avatar’s gaze was replaced by arrow cues. These data demonstrate that the intention monitoring processes involved in differentiating communicative and non-communicative gaze shifts during the Search task had a measurable influence on subsequent joint attention behaviour. The empirical and methodological implications of these findings for the fields of autism and social neuroscience will be discussed.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 09-2015
DOI: 10.1016/J.JNEUMETH.2015.05.025
Abstract: The N170 is a "face-sensitive" event-related potential (ERP) that occurs at around 170ms over occipito-temporal brain regions. The N170's potential to provide insight into the neural processing of faces in certain populations (e.g., children and adults with cognitive impairments) is limited by its measurement in scientific laboratories that can appear threatening to some people. The advent of cheap, easy-to-use portable gaming EEG systems provides an opportunity to record EEG in new contexts and populations. This study tested the validity of the face-sensitive N170 ERP measured with an adapted commercial EEG system (the Emotiv EPOC) that is used at home by gamers. The N170 recorded through both the gaming EEG system and the research EEG system exhibited face-sensitivity, with larger mean litudes in response to the face stimuli than the non-face stimuli, and a delayed N170 peak in response to face inversion. The EPOC system produced very similar N170 ERPs to a research-grade Neuroscan system, and was capable of recording face-sensitivity in the N170, validating its use as research tool in this arena. This opens new possibilities for measuring the face-sensitive N170 ERP in people who cannot travel to a traditional ERP laboratory (e.g., elderly people in care), who cannot tolerate laboratory conditions (e.g., people with autism), or who need to be tested in situ for practical or experimental reasons (e.g., children in schools).
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 16-08-2004
DOI: 10.1111/J.1467-7687.2004.00356.X
Abstract: Event-related potentials (ERPs) to tone pairs and single tones were measured for 16 participants with specific language impairment (SLI) and 16 age-matched controls aged from 10 to 19 years The tone pairs were separated by an inter-stimulus interval (ISI) of 20, 50 or 150 ms. The intraclass correlation (ICC) was computed for each participant between the ERP to a single tone and the ERP to the tone pair. A high ICC indicates that the brain response to a tone pair is similar to that for a single tone. ICCs were significantly higher at short than at long ISIs. At 50-ms ISI, ICCs were higher for younger than older participants. Age and ISI interacted with SLI status: ERPs of older participants with SLI differed from age-matched controls, and resembled ERPs of younger controls, consistent with a theory of immature auditory processing in SLI.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 05-2014
DOI: 10.1016/J.NEUROPSYCHOLOGIA.2014.02.006
Abstract: The current study used event-related potentials (ERP) in combination with a variable viewing position paradigm (VVPP) to direct fixations to specific face parts (eyes or mouths) in upright or inverted whole faces. The N170 elicited by the VVPP was greater to faces than to non-face objects (wristwatches), and was delayed and enhanced in response to face inversion. A larger N170 response was elicited when the participants׳ fixation was directed to the eyes than when directed to the mouths of both upright and inverted faces, an effect that was also modulated by the spatial location of the face in the visual field. The N170 face inversion effect (upright minus inverted) was greater when fixations were directed to the mouth than when directed to the eyes, suggesting that the point of fixation within a face modulates brain potentials due to contributions from the features themselves, as well as their relative location in the visual field.
Publisher: Ovid Technologies (Wolters Kluwer Health)
Date: 27-08-2008
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 03-03-2015
DOI: 10.1080/02643294.2015.1014331
Abstract: The aim of the current study was to determine whether poor verbal working memory is associated with poor word reading accuracy because the former causes the latter, or the latter causes the former. To this end, we tested whether (a) verbal working memory training improves poor verbal working memory or poor word reading accuracy, and whether (b) reading training improves poor reading accuracy or verbal working memory in a case series of four children with poor word reading accuracy and verbal working memory. Each child completed 8 weeks of verbal working memory training and 8 weeks of reading training. Verbal working memory training improved verbal working memory in two of the four children, but did not improve their reading accuracy. Similarly, reading training improved word reading accuracy in all children, but did not improve their verbal working memory. These results suggest that the causal links between verbal working memory and reading accuracy may not be as direct as has been assumed.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 15-10-2012
DOI: 10.1016/J.IJDEVNEU.2012.10.002
Abstract: Adolescence is a time of great change in the brain in terms of structure and function. It is possible to track the development of neural function across adolescence using auditory event-related potentials (ERPs). This study tested if the brain's functional processing of sound changed across adolescence. We measured passive auditory t-complex peaks to pure tones and consonant-vowel (CV) syllables in 90 children and adolescents aged 10-18 years, as well as 10 adults. Across adolescence, Na litude increased to tones and speech at the right, but not left, temporal site. Ta litude decreased at the right temporal site for tones, and at both sites for speech. The Tb remained constant at both sites. The Na and Ta appeared to mature later in the right than left hemisphere. The t-complex peaks Na and Tb exhibited left lateralization and Ta showed right lateralization. Thus, the functional processing of sound continued to develop across adolescence and into adulthood.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 10-2000
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 21-04-2004
DOI: 10.1002/DYS.269
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 02-2015
DOI: 10.1016/J.NEULET.2014.12.041
Abstract: Adolescents experience significant changes in various physiological and psychological domains due to changes in their brain's structure and function. A lot is known about structural changes in the brain across adolescence. However, less research has investigated changes in brain function during this period. In this study, we tracked the maturation of the auditory mismatch negativity (MMN) and P3a brain responses - both posited as neural indices of auditory discrimination - in 90 adolescents aged 10-18 years. We found that P3a mean litude and latency decreased significantly across adolescence, but there was no reliable change in the MMN. These results suggest that neural processes associated with passive auditory processing continue to develop well into adolescence.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 12-2012
DOI: 10.1016/J.NEUROPSYCHOLOGIA.2012.07.016
Abstract: We report the first three cases of selective developmental letter position dyslexia in English. Although the parents and teachers of the children were concerned about these children's reading, standard tests did not reveal their deficit. It was only when the appropriate target words were presented, in this case, migratable words, that their letter position dyslexia was detected. Whereas previous research has described cases with acquired and developmental forms of letter position dyslexia in Hebrew and Arabic readers, this is the first report of this type of reading disorder in English. The cardinal symptom of letter position dyslexia is the migration of letters within the word (reading slime as 'smile' pirates as 'parties'). These migration errors occur in reading aloud as well as in tasks of silent reading. This study provides further evidence that migration errors emerge at the level of early visual-orthographic analysis, in the letter position encoding function. Alternative explanations for the occurrence of migration errors such as poor phonological processing or a deficit in the orthographic input lexicon are ruled out.
Publisher: Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO)
Date: 29-03-2010
DOI: 10.1167/8.6.704
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 09-2012
DOI: 10.1016/J.BRAINDEV.2011.10.009
Abstract: Adolescence represents the period of transition from childhood to adulthood and is characterized by significant changes in brain structure and function. We studied changes in the functional visual processing in the brain across adolescence. Visual evoked potentials (VEPs) to three types of pattern reversal checkerboard stimuli were measured in 90 adolescents (10-18 years) and 10 adults. Across adolescence, the N75 and P100 VEP peaks decreased in size while the N135 peak increased slightly in size. The latency of VEP peaks showed no reliable change across adolescence. The results suggest that even very basic visual sensory function continues to develop throughout adolescence. The results indicate significant changes in visual parvocellular and magnocellular pathways across adolescence.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 11-2011
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 13-05-2015
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 2012
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 31-10-2013
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 05-2010
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 09-2018
DOI: 10.1016/J.CORTEX.2018.04.008
Abstract: Surface dyslexia is characterised by poor reading of irregular words while nonword reading can be completely normal. Previous work has identified several theoretical possibilities for the underlying locus of impairment in surface dyslexia. In this study, we systematically investigated whether children with surface dyslexia showed different patterns of reading performance that could be traced back to different underlying levels of impairment. To do this, we tested 12 English readers, replicating previous work in Hebrew (Gvion & Friedmann, 2013 2016 Friedmann & Lukov, 2008 Friedmann & Gvion, 2016). In our s le, we found that poor irregular word reading was associated with deficits at the level of the orthographic input lexicon and with impaired access to meaning and spoken word forms after processing written words in the orthographic input lexicon. There were also children whose surface dyslexia seemed to be caused by impairments of the phonological output lexicon. We suggest that further evidence is required to unequivocally support a fourth pattern where the link between orthography and meaning is intact while the link between orthography and spoken word forms is not functioning. All patterns found were consistent with dual route theory while possible patterns of results, which would be inconsistent with dual route theory, were not detected.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 05-2003
DOI: 10.3758/BF03202561
Abstract: To make the electroencephalogram (EEG) recording procedure more tolerable, listeners have been allowed in some experiments to watch an audible video while their auditory P1, N1, P2, and mismatch negativity (MMN) event-related potentials (ERPs) to experimental sounds have been measured. However, video sounds may degrade auditory ERPs to experimental sounds. This concern was tested with 19 adults who were instructed to ignore standard and deviant tones presented through headphones while they watched a video with the soundtrack audible in one condition and silent in the other. Video sound impaired the size, latency, and split-half reliability of the MMN, and it decreased the size of the P2. However, it had little effect on the P1 or N1 or on the split-half reliability of the P1-N1-P2 waveform, which was significantly more reliable than the MMN waveform regardless of whether the video sound was on or off. The impressive reliability of the P1 and N1 components allows for the use of video sound during EEG recording, and they may prove useful for assessing auditory processing in listeners who cannot tolerate long testing sessions.
Publisher: Ovid Technologies (Wolters Kluwer Health)
Date: 10-2004
DOI: 10.1097/00001756-200410050-00010
Abstract: There is electrophysiological evidence that phonological categorization has occurred within 100-200 ms post stimulus onset for the syllables /tae/ and /dae/, which vary in voice onset time. Using a similar paradigm, this study investigated when phonological categorization occurred for the contrast between /I/ and /epsilon/, using synthesized speech tokens that differed in the frequency of the first formant. Here we show that phonological categorization of these tokens has not occurred 100-200 ms after stimulus onset. However, the presence of a late mismatch negativity (350 ms after stimulus onset) indicated that phonological categorization had taken place by this time.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 05-2009
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 23-05-2018
Abstract: This study evaluated the claim that auditory processing deficits are a cause of reading and language difficulties. We report a longitudinal study of 245 children at family risk of dyslexia, children with preschool language impairments, and control children. Children with language impairments had poorer frequency-discrimination thresholds than controls at 5.5 years, but children at family risk of dyslexia did not. A model assessing longitudinal relationships among frequency discrimination, reading, language, and executive function skills showed that frequency discrimination was predicted by executive skills but was not a longitudinal predictor of reading or language skills. Our findings contradict the hypothesis that frequency discrimination is causally related to dyslexia or language impairment and suggest that in iduals at risk for dyslexia or who have language impairments may perform poorly on auditory processing tasks because of comorbid attentional difficulties.
Publisher: PeerJ
Date: 07-0005
DOI: 10.7717/PEERJ.922
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 29-10-2010
DOI: 10.1080/87565641.2010.508548
Abstract: This study tested if training can normalize atypical passive auditory event-related potentials in the N1-P2 time window in children with specific reading disability (SRD) or specific language impairment (SLI). Children with SRD or SLI and untrained controls were tested for their behavioral responses and N1-P2 windows to tones, backward-masked tones, vowels, and consonant-vowels. Children with SRD or SLI with poor behavioral responses to one of these sounds trained to discriminate that sound for 30 minutes a day, 4 days a week, for 6 weeks. Post-training measures revealed that training normalized atypical behavioral responses but not atypical N1-P2 windows.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 09-2010
DOI: 10.1016/J.NEULET.2010.07.010
Abstract: The mismatch negativity (MMN) component of the auditory event-related potential (ERP) reflects the process of change detection in the auditory system. The present study investigated the effect of deviance direction (increment vs. decrement) and calculation method (traditional vs. same-stimulus) on the litude of MMN. MMN was recorded for increments and decrements in frequency and duration in 20 adults. The stimuli (standard/deviant) were 250 Hz/350 Hz (frequency MMN) and 200 ms/300 ms (duration MMN) for increment MMN and vice versa for decrement MMN. Amplitude of MMN was calculated in two ways: the traditional method (subtracting ERP to the standard from the deviant presented in the same block) and the same-stimulus method (subtracting ERP to identical stimuli presented as standard in one block and deviant in another block). We found that increments in frequency produced higher MMN litudes compared to decrements for both methods of calculation. For duration deviance, the decrement MMN was absent in the traditional method, while the decrement and increment MMN did not differ for the same-stimulus method. These findings suggest that the brain processes frequency increments and decrements in different ways. The results also suggest the use of same-stimulus method for the calculation of duration MMN when long duration stimuli are used.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 04-05-2016
DOI: 10.1111/DESC.12328
Abstract: It has been proposed that language impairments in children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) stem from atypical neural processing of speech and/or nonspeech sounds. However, the strength of this proposal is compromised by the unreliable outcomes of previous studies of speech and nonspeech processing in ASD. The aim of this study was to determine whether there was an association between poor spoken language and atypical event-related field (ERF) responses to speech and nonspeech sounds in children with ASD (n = 14) and controls (n = 18). Data from this developmental population (ages 6-14) were analysed using a novel combination of methods to maximize the reliability of our findings while taking into consideration the heterogeneity of the ASD population. The results showed that poor spoken language scores were associated with atypical left hemisphere brain responses (200 to 400 ms) to both speech and nonspeech in the ASD group. These data support the idea that some children with ASD may have an immature auditory cortex that affects their ability to process both speech and nonspeech sounds. Their poor speech processing may impair their ability to process the speech of other people, and hence reduce their ability to learn the phonology, syntax, and semantics of their native language.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 26-11-2014
Publisher: PeerJ
Date: 09-02-2021
DOI: 10.7717/PEERJ.10700
Abstract: The use of consumer-grade electroencephalography (EEG) systems for research purposes has become more prevalent. In event-related potential (ERP) research, it is critical that these systems have precise and accurate timing. The aim of the current study was to investigate the timing reliability of event-marking solutions used with Emotiv commercial EEG systems. We conducted three experiments. In Experiment 1 we established a jitter threshold (i.e. the point at which jitter made an event-marking method unreliable). To do this, we introduced statistical noise to the temporal position of event-marks of a pre-existing ERP dataset (recorded with a research-grade system, Neuroscan SynAmps 2 at 1,000 Hz using parallel-port event-marking) and calculated the level at which the waveform peaks differed statistically from the original waveform. In Experiment 2 we established a method to identify ‘true’ events (i.e. when an event should appear in the EEG data). We did this by inserting 1,000 events into Neuroscan data using a custom-built event-marking system, the ‘Airmarker’, which marks events by triggering voltage spikes in two EEG channels. We used the lag between Airmarker events and events generated by Neuroscan as a reference for comparisons in Experiment 3. In Experiment 3 we measured the precision and accuracy of three types of Emotiv event-marking by generating 1,000 events, 1 s apart. We measured precision as the variability (standard deviation in ms) of Emotiv events and accuracy as the mean difference between Emotiv events and true events. The three triggering methods we tested were: (1) Parallel-port-generated TTL triggers (2) Arduino-generated TTL triggers and (3) Serial-port triggers. In Methods 1 and 2 we used an auxiliary device, Emotiv Extender, to incorporate triggers into the EEG data. We tested these event-marking methods across three configurations of Emotiv EEG systems: (1) Emotiv EPOC+ s ling at 128 Hz (2) Emotiv EPOC+ s ling at 256 Hz and (3) Emotiv EPOC Flex s ling at 128 Hz. In Experiment 1 we found that the smaller P1 and N1 peaks were attenuated at lower levels of jitter relative to the larger P2 peak (21 ms, 16 ms, and 45 ms for P1, N1, and P2, respectively). In Experiment 2, we found an average lag of 30.96 ms for Airmarker events relative to Neuroscan events. In Experiment 3, we found some lag in all configurations. However, all configurations exhibited precision of less than a single s le, with serial-port-marking the most precise when paired with EPOC+ s ling at 256 Hz. All Emotiv event-marking methods and configurations that we tested were precise enough for ERP research as the precision of each method would provide ERP waveforms statistically equivalent to a research-standard system. Though all systems exhibited some level of inaccuracy, researchers could easily account for these during data processing.
Publisher: Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science
Date: 2010
DOI: 10.5096/ASCS200944
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 2020
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 07-2001
DOI: 10.1002/DYS.200
Abstract: A popular hypothesis holds that specific reading disability (SRD) and specific language impairment (SLI) result from an impaired ability to process rapid and brief sounds. However, the results of experiments that have tested this hypothesis are incongruous. A number of factors could explain these contradictory findings, including the questionable reliability and validity of rapid auditory processing tasks, in idual differences in the auditory processing abilities of SRD and SLI populations, the age of listeners, the quality of control groups, and the relationship between verbal and non-verbal auditory processing abilities. These issues highlight the need for future studies to (1) establish the reliability and validity of psychophysical tasks used to assess rapid auditory processing (2) report the rapid auditory processing scores of in iduals rather than just group means (3) include a wide range of reading and spoken language tests to determine the literacy and oral language profile of people who demonstrate an auditory processing deficit (4) include clinical comparison groups to determine whether a rapid auditory processing deficit is related specifically to written and spoken language impairments and (5) examine the relationship between low-level non-verbal, verbal, and phonological processing abilities.
Publisher: PeerJ
Date: 21-04-2015
DOI: 10.7717/PEERJ.907
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 03-2010
DOI: 10.1016/J.NEUROIMAGE.2009.11.071
Abstract: The aim of this study was to determine if, and when, the neural processes involved in switching associations formed with angry and happy faces start to erge. We measured event-related potentials (ERPs) and behavioural responses while participants performed a reversal learning task with angry and happy faces. In the task, participants were simultaneously presented with two neutral faces and learned to associate one of the faces with an emotional expression (either angry or happy), which was displayed by the face when correctly selected. After three to seven trials, the face that had consistently been displaying an emotional expression when selected would instead remain neutral, signalling the participant to switch their response and select the other face on the subsequent trial. The neural processes involved in switching associations formed with angry and happy faces erged 375 ms after stimulus onset. Specifically, P3a litude was reduced and P3b latency was delayed when participants were cued to switch associations formed with angry expressions compared to happy expressions. This difference was also evident in later behavioural responses, which showed that it was more difficult to switch associations made with angry expressions than happy expressions. These findings may reflect an adaptive mechanism that facilitates the maintenance of our memory of threatening in iduals by associating them with their potential threat.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 10-2005
DOI: 10.1016/J.COGBRAINRES.2005.08.007
Abstract: Previous studies have found that the P2 component of the auditory event-related potential (ERP) increases after speech discrimination training. We compared electrophysiological and behavioral outcomes of in iduals undergoing speech discrimination training (N = 8) with an untrained control group (N = 9). Significant improvements on the behavioral speech discrimination task were found only in the trained group however, there were similar increases in P2 litude in both groups. Simple exposure to repeated instances of a speech sound during the ERP recording seems sufficient lead to enhancement of P2. This interpretation was bolstered by the finding of significant change in P2 during the first and second halves of the initial ERP recording, when listeners were not required to make any discriminative response. However, the largest change in P2 occurred between rather than within recording sessions, suggesting that the effects of exposure to a speech stimulus on ERPs may have a slow time-course and are most evident after a delay. Our data challenge the view that increased P2 litude reflects enhanced perceptual discrimination by auditory cortex.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 10-2013
Abstract: The aims of this study were to (a) compare sight word training and phonics training in children with dyslexia, and (b) determine if different orders of sight word and phonics training have different effects on the reading skills of children with dyslexia. One group of children ( n = 36) did 8 weeks of phonics training (reading via grapheme–phoneme correspondence rules) and then 8 weeks of sight word training (reading irregular words as a whole), one group did the reverse ( n = 36), and one group did phonics and sight word training simultaneously for two 8-week periods ( n = 32). We measured the effects of phonics and sight word training on sight word reading (trained irregular word reading accuracy, untrained irregular word reading accuracy), phonics reading (nonword reading accuracy, nonword reading fluency), and general reading (word reading fluency, reading comprehension). Sight word training led to significant gains in sight word reading measures that were larger than gains made from phonics training, phonics training led to statistically significant gains in a phonics reading measure that were larger than gains made from sight word training, and both types of training led to significant gains in general reading that were similar in size. Training phonics before sight words had a slight advantage over the reverse order. We discuss the clinical implications of these findings for improving the treatment and assessment of children with dyslexia.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 21-03-2016
DOI: 10.1080/17470919.2016.1160953
Abstract: The current study measured adults' P350 and N170 ERPs while they interacted with a character in a virtual reality paradigm. Some participants believed the character was controlled by a human ("avatar" condition, n = 19) others believed it was controlled by a computer program ("agent" condition, n = 19). In each trial, participants initiated joint attention in order to direct the character's gaze toward a target. In 50% of trials, the character gazed toward the target (congruent responses), and in 50% of trials the character gazed to a different location (incongruent response). In the avatar condition, the character's incongruent gaze responses generated significantly larger P350 peaks at centro-parietal sites than congruent gaze responses. In the agent condition, the P350 effect was strikingly absent. Left occipitotemporal N170 responses were significantly smaller in the agent condition compared to the avatar condition for both congruent and incongruent gaze shifts. These data suggest that beliefs about human agency may recruit mechanisms that discriminate the social outcome of a gaze shift after approximately 350 ms, and that these mechanisms may modulate the early perceptual processing of gaze. These findings also suggest that the ecologically valid measurement of social cognition may depend upon paradigms that simulate genuine social interactions.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 06-2008
DOI: 10.1016/J.COGNITION.2007.12.005
Abstract: Sixty-five children with specific reading disability (SRD), 25 children with specific language impairment (SLI), and 37 age-matched controls were tested for their frequency discrimination, rapid auditory processing, vowel discrimination, and consonant-vowel discrimination. Subgroups of children with SRD or SLI produced abnormal frequency discrimination (42%), rapid auditory processing (12%), vowel discrimination (23%), or consonant-vowel discrimination (18%) thresholds for their age. Twenty-eight of these children trained on a programme that targeted their specific auditory processing deficit for 6 weeks. Twenty-five of these 28 trainees produced normal thresholds for their targeted processing skill after training. These gains were not explained by gains in auditory attention, in the ability to do psychophysical tasks in general, or by test-retest effects. The 25 successful trainees also produced significantly higher scores on spoken language and spelling tests after training. However, an untrained control group showed test-retest effects on the same tests. These results suggest that auditory processing deficits can be treated successfully in children with SRD and SLI but that this does not help them acquire new reading, spelling, or spoken language skills.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 15-11-2011
Publisher: American Speech Language Hearing Association
Date: 06-2004
DOI: 10.1044/1092-4388(2004/041)
Abstract: The reliability and validity of a frequency discrimination (FD) task were tested in 16 people with specific language impairment (SLI) and 16 people with normal spoken language (controls). The FD thresholds of the 2 groups indicated that FD thresholds for 25-ms and 250-ms tones were remarkably stable across 18 months. The FD thresholds were lower for control listeners than for listeners with SLI for both duration conditions, and the FD thresholds for both groups of listeners were lower for 250-ms tones than for 25-ms tones. Moreover, the FD thresholds were influenced little by nonperceptual, task-related abilities (e.g., paired-associative learning, memory for temporal order, sustained attention, and control of attention) of the listener groups. The significant group difference between the mean FD thresholds of the SLI and control groups was explained by a subgroup of people with SLI who had particularly poor thresholds compared with those of controls and the majority of the SLI group. This subgroup did not differ from the remainder of the SLI s le in terms of age or nonverbal ability but was characterized by very poor reading that was associated with poor phonemic awareness.
Publisher: Ovid Technologies (Wolters Kluwer Health)
Date: 04-2009
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 10-2016
DOI: 10.1016/J.JPEDS.2016.06.037
Abstract: To examine the efficacy of a phonics-training program in children with neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) and reading difficulties. Thirty children (7-12 years of age) with NF1 completed a double-baseline, 24-week intervention trial. Literacy outcome measures were assessed at 4 time points: (1) at baseline (2) after an 8-week no-treatment period (3) immediately post-treatment and (4) at follow-up 8 weeks post-treatment. Repeated-measures ANOVA were conducted to examine change over time for all outcome measures, and significant main effects were explored with planned comparisons. Predictors of treatment effects were examined by linear regressions. Ninety percent of participants completed the intervention. Intervention-specific improvements were observed across a range of literacy outcomes, including reading accuracy (nonword reading, Cohen d = 1.10 regular-word reading, Cohen d = 0.32), letter-sound knowledge (Cohen d = 0.80), blending (Cohen d = 0.88), repetition of nonsense words (Cohen d = 0.94), phonemic decoding fluency (Cohen d = 0.55), and reading comprehension (Cohen d = 0.31). Improvements were maintained 8 weeks post-treatment. Age (P = .03) and working memory (P = .02) significantly influenced efficacy, with greatest improvements observed in older children with stronger verbal working memory capacity. Home-based, computerized reading intervention was effective in improving the reading and reading-related abilities of children with NF1 and reading difficulty. Australian and New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry: ACTRN12611000779976.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 02-2019
DOI: 10.1016/J.CPR.2018.09.002
Abstract: Numerous studies have demonstrated an association between learning disabilities and internalising problems such as anxiety and depression. However, our understanding of this association for people with specific types of learning disability - such as poor reading - is poorly understood. Here, we present the first systematic review and meta-analysis of studies that have examined associations between poor reading and internalising problems - including anxiety and depression - in children, adolescents, and adults. Our systematic search identified 34 studies comprising 16,275 participants (N = 2491 poor readers). Our meta-analysis revealed statistically significant differences between poor readers and typical readers on general measures of internalising problems (d = 0.41), as well as specific measures of anxiety (d = 0.41) and depression (d = 0.23). These outcomes suggest that poor readers are at moderate risk for experiencing internalising problems compared to typical readers, which appears to stem from a greater risk for anxiety than depression.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Date: 05-04-2012
Publisher: Ovid Technologies (Wolters Kluwer Health)
Date: 06-2002
DOI: 10.1097/00001756-200206120-00021
Abstract: Previous work has found that auditory event-related potentials show maturational changes, with latency and litude of late components (N1 and P2) decreasing and increasing with age respectively. Our goal was to test the hypothesis that these changes reflect increased speed of neural processing in the auditory system. Thirty-three listeners, aged 10-50 years, were tested on a frequency discrimination task and an auditory backward recognition masking task. P1 and N1b event-related potential components were measured to tones. The N1b became larger and earlier with age, and the latency of P1 decreased with age. However, thresholds on the behavioural tasks did not change with age. Nevertheless, in idual differences in the peak litude of N1b were independently related to frequency discrimination and degree of masking. Thus, the relationship that does exist between in idual differences in psychoacoustic performance and the auditory N1b reflect a stable characteristic of the in idual rather than a maturational change.
Publisher: Ovid Technologies (Wolters Kluwer Health)
Date: 11-1999
DOI: 10.1097/00001756-199911260-00042
Abstract: The attentional blink (AB) is a brief impairment of visual processing occurring 200-500 ms after a target in a rapid stream of visual stimuli. At issue here is the relationship between AB and the P300 ERP component, as both are maximal at about 300 ms and have been hypothesised to reflect inhibitory processes. Two experiments revealed that AB and P300 follow a similar time course at the in idual and group level, that reducing task difficulty has similar effects on AB and P300 magnitude at the group level, but that there is no relationship between the magnitude of AB and P300 within observers. These findings suggest a moderate association between the two phenomena, which may mirror transient inhibition of cortical networks to facilitate processing of target events.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 2005
DOI: 10.1016/S0010-9452(08)70270-3
Abstract: It has frequently been claimed that children with specific language impairment (SLI) have impaired auditory perception, but there is much controversy about the role of such deficits in causing their language problems, and it has been difficult to establish solid, replicable findings in this area. Discrepancies in this field may arise because (a) a focus on mean results obscures the heterogeneity in the population and (b) insufficient attention has been paid to maturational aspects of auditory processing. We conducted a study of 16 young people with specific language impairment (SLI) and 16 control participants, 24 of whom had had auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) and frequency discrimination thresholds assessed 18 months previously. When originally assessed, around one third of the listeners with SLI had poor behavioural frequency discrimination thresholds, and these tended to be the younger participants. However, most of the SLI group had age-inappropriate late components of the auditory ERP, regardless of their frequency discrimination. At follow-up, the behavioural thresholds of those with poor frequency discrimination improved, though some remained outside the control range. At follow-up, ERPs for many of the in iduals in the SLI group were still not age-appropriate. In several cases, waveforms of in iduals in the SLI group resembled those of younger typically-developing children, though in other cases the waveform was unlike that of control cases at any age. Electrophysiological methods may reveal underlying immaturity or other abnormality of auditory processing even when behavioural thresholds look normal. This study emphasises the variability seen in SLI, and the importance of studying in idual cases rather than focusing on group means.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 11-08-2009
DOI: 10.1111/J.1467-7687.2008.00804.X
Abstract: This study tested if children with specific language impairment (SLI) or children with specific reading disability (SRD) have abnormal brain responses to sounds. We tested 6- to 12-year-old children with SLI (N =19), children with SRD (N =55), and age-matched controls (N =36) for their passive auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) to tones, rapid tones, vowels and consonant-vowels. Thirty-eight percent of the children with SLI or SRD had less typical passive auditory ERPs in the N1-P2 window to sounds in general, rather than to tones, rapid tones, vowels or consonant-vowels specifically. The ERPs of these children were significantly 'flatter' in the N1-P2 region than normal. All the children with flatter ERPs in the N1-P2 region had poor non-word reading. A subgroup of these poor non-word readers also had poor non-word repetition. These findings support the hypothesis that impaired auditory processing is a causal risk factor for both SLI and SRD.
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
Date: 19-06-2015
Location: Poland
No related grants have been discovered for Genevieve McArthur.