Malfunctioning of new word learning in SLI children as indexed by Mismatch Negativity
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1
Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Freiburg, Germany
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2
Experimental Neurolingustics Group, University of Bielefeld, Germany
For several decades, the aetiology of Specific Language Impairment (SLI) has been associated with central auditory processing deficits disrupting the normal language development of the affected children. Within research on central auditory processing Mismatch Negativity (MMN), a component of the event-related potentials (ERP), is a useful tool to probe central auditory functions of SLI children (e.g. Rinker et al. 2007, for a review Bishop 2007). The MMN has also been used to study phonological learning effects (Shestakova et al. 2003). It is also known that memory traces of words influence central auditory processing (e.g. Pulvermüller et al. 2001, 2004, for a review Näätänen et al. 2007; see also Lee et al. 2009, and another Poster). We wanted to investigate whether learning of word meaning influences central auditory processing in SLI compared with normal children. 10 SLI-children and 19 age matched controls participated in a passive oddball paradigm, which comprised two conditions. In both conditions the German pseudoword /fa-po/ served as standard stimulus, /fa-pe/ as deviant 1 and /fa-pu/ as deviant 2. Before the second condition, subjects learned to connect meaning with the deviant 1. For deviant 1, we observed a significant reduction of MMN-amplitude and the elicitation of a P3a after learning in the control group. There were no changes concerning deviant 2. This leads to the interpretation that the reduction of MMN and the P3a can be ascribed to meaning learning. In the SLI-group, such changes were not observed after learning. In this study the reduction of the MMN-amplitude in the control-group was interpreted as meaning-related MMN-effect caused by the possibility to connect the incoming auditory information with conceptual-semantic knowledge. It was also suggested that the P3a reflects an automatic attention switch to the newly learned verbal stimulus. These meaning effects could not be observed in the SLI-group, as no change after learning could be confirmed. We hypothesize that the learning-mechanism of new verbal meaning malfunctions in children with SLI.
Conference:
MMN 09
Fifth Conference on Mismatch Negativity (MMN) and its Clinical and Scientific Applications, Budapest, Hungary, 4 Apr - 7 Apr, 2009.
Presentation Type:
Poster Presentation
Topic:
Poster Presentations
Citation:
Lee
SE,
Thomas
C,
Hennighausen
K and
Schecker
M
(2009). Malfunctioning of new word learning in SLI children as indexed by Mismatch Negativity.
Conference Abstract:
MMN 09
Fifth Conference on Mismatch Negativity (MMN) and its Clinical and Scientific Applications.
doi: 10.3389/conf.neuro.09.2009.05.060
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Received:
24 Mar 2009;
Published Online:
24 Mar 2009.
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Correspondence:
Sung E Lee, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany, cristlovig@yahoo.de