Electrophysiological markers of orthographic pattern learning in school-aged children with reading challenges: An ERP investigation

Background

Previous studies suggested that children with reading difficulty have impaired statistical learning ability in extracting distributional orthographic regularities. However, the neural mechanisms underlying have not been fully investigated.

Aims

The current study aimed to identify the electrophysiological markers and to examine the neural underpinnings of statistical learning of orthographic regularities in children with reading difficulties.

Methods and procedures

Using the event-related potentials (ERPs) and the orthographic learning task, 157 children were exposed to a sequence of artificial pseudocharacters with varying levels of positional and semantic consistency (low at 60 %, moderate at 80 %, and high at 100 %).

Outcomes and results

Poor readers elicited an increased N170 response in the low consistency and a lack of left-lateralized P300 effect when learning positional regularities of radicals. Similarly, larger N170 effects were observed in poor readers, while similar N400 effects were found in both poor and average readers when learning semantic regularities of radicals.

Conclusions and implications

Our findings indicate that poor readers may have trouble using statistical information for early-stage orthographic pattern extraction, yet they can identify semantic inconsistencies after sufficient exposure. These results deepen our understanding of the neural mechanisms involved in statistical learning for poor readers and aid in improving criteria for differentiating between typically developing children and those with reading challenges.