We have designed a longitudinal study to examine reading (in typically developing and reading disabledchildren) at critical points during its acquisition in readers learning writing systems that vary in orthographicdepth: Finnish, English, and Mandarin Chinese. Our previous cross sectional research in English hasidentified age- and ability-related differences in both neurobiological and behavioral trajectories; theproposed longitudinal study is aimed at gaining a better understanding of the neurocognitive factorsresponsible for the observed divergences in the reading skills of normally developing and reading disabledcohorts, and to examine the influence of writing system on these divergences. To that end, we will monitordevelopment during children's initial acquisition of the code (ages 5 to 8 years) and during the attainment offluency by intermediate level readers (ages 8 to 11 years). Developing proficiency in each longitudinalsample will be assessed with common psychometric, adaptive learning, and neurobiological (ERP and fMRI)measures so that relationships among attained skills, cognitive processing, and cortical organization can betracked.
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