Cross-sectional study demonstrates altered N200 and reduced N400 amplitudes in children with reading difficulties, indicating distinct early and late neural processing impairments.
Key Points
To investigate neurocognitive differences in visual word processing between children with reading difficulties and age-matched typical readers using event-related potentials during a lexical decision task.
Assessed Grade 3 and Grade 6 Greek-speaking children (ages 7.6–12.1 years) categorized into reading difficulties (RD) and chronological-age-matched control (CA) groups.
Presented a visual lexical decision task requiring participants to distinguish real words from orthographically similar pseudowords during electroencephalogram recording.
Quantified and compared early sensory/visual (N200) and later lexical access/evaluation (N400) event-related potential components across groups.
Grade 3 children with RD demonstrated significantly higher N200 amplitudes than CA controls, whereas Grade 6 groups showed no significant differences in N200 amplitude.
Children with RD in both Grade 3 and Grade 6 exhibited reduced N400 amplitudes compared to CA controls during word recognition.