Our long term goals are to study biological constraints and the role of experience in the formation of neural systems relevant to language and cognition. Our approach will be to compare cerebral functions during sensory, cognitive and language tasks in children at different ages and different stages of language and cognitive development. Additional comparisons between normal children and children who are specifically language-impaired and reading disabled (LI/RD) will also help to separate age-related from language-relevant aspects of neural development, and will permit an assessment of the neurobehavioral functions that have been implicated in the deficits that LI/RD subjects (Ss) display. We will record event-related brain potentials (ERPs) from over several brain regions while normal children aged 4-19 years and LI/RD children and matched controls aged 10-13 years process specific kinds of sensory, cognitive and language information. The hypotheses to be tested in the five series of proposed studies include: (1) The neural systems associated with grammatical processing develop later, are more dependent on specialized system within the left hemisphere, and are more impaired in LD/RD Ss than are those associated with semantic processing, (II) LI/RD Ss display a deficit in the elaboration and subsequent recognition of auditory language material, (III) Priming of semantic and phonological lexical information involves different neural systems; the former are intact but the latter are deficient in LI/RD Ss, (IV) Different neural systems mediate language and non-language cognitive processes at all ages and levels of development; the specialization of the right hemisphere for spatial attention and face perception is preceded by and depends upon the development of left hemisphere specialization for language and (V) LI/RD populations are impaired in the ability to process rapidly presented non-language auditory and visual stimuli. The proposed research is pointed, in the long run, toward an understanding of the optimal nature and timing of education for normal and language-impaired populations.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01DC000481-04
Application #
3216967
Study Section
Sensory Disorders and Language Study Section (CMS)
Project Start
1988-04-01
Project End
1993-03-31
Budget Start
1991-04-01
Budget End
1992-03-31
Support Year
4
Fiscal Year
1991
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
Salk Institute for Biological Studies
Department
Type
DUNS #
005436803
City
La Jolla
State
CA
Country
United States
Zip Code
92037
Andersson, Annika; Sanders, Lisa D; Coch, Donna et al. (2018) Anterior and posterior erp rhyming effects in 3- to 5-year-old children. Dev Cogn Neurosci 30:178-190
Hampton Wray, Amanda; Stevens, Courtney; Pakulak, Eric et al. (2017) Development of selective attention in preschool-age children from lower socioeconomic status backgrounds. Dev Cogn Neurosci 26:101-111
Isbell, Elif; Stevens, Courtney; Pakulak, Eric et al. (2017) Neuroplasticity of selective attention: Research foundations and preliminary evidence for a gene by intervention interaction. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 114:9247-9254
Karns, Christina M; Isbell, Elif; Giuliano, Ryan J et al. (2015) Auditory attention in childhood and adolescence: An event-related potential study of spatial selective attention to one of two simultaneous stories. Dev Cogn Neurosci 13:53-67
Stevens, Courtney; Paulsen, David; Yasen, Alia et al. (2015) Atypical auditory refractory periods in children from lower socio-economic status backgrounds: ERP evidence for a role of selective attention. Int J Psychophysiol 95:156-66
Neville, Helen J; Stevens, Courtney; Pakulak, Eric et al. (2013) Family-based training program improves brain function, cognition, and behavior in lower socioeconomic status preschoolers. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 110:12138-43
Stevens, Courtney; Harn, Beth; Chard, David J et al. (2013) Examining the role of attention and instruction in at-risk kindergarteners: electrophysiological measures of selective auditory attention before and after an early literacy intervention. J Learn Disabil 46:73-86
Stevens, Courtney; Paulsen, David; Yasen, Alia et al. (2012) Electrophysiological evidence for attenuated auditory recovery cycles in children with specific language impairment. Brain Res 1438:35-47
Yamada, Yoshiko; Stevens, Courtney; Dow, Mark et al. (2011) Emergence of the neural network for reading in five-year-old beginning readers of different levels of pre-literacy abilities: an fMRI study. Neuroimage 57:704-13
Pakulak, Eric; Neville, Helen J (2011) Maturational constraints on the recruitment of early processes for syntactic processing. J Cogn Neurosci 23:2752-65

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