Deviant coarse neural print tuning in Chinese children with dyslexia

The N1 component of the ERP is thought to be sensitive to print expertise, as it is typically larger for familiar words than unfamiliar visual control stimuli. Such coarse N1 print tuning was shown to develop with learning to read and to be reduced in children with dyslexia in alphabetic languages. Previous studies in Chinese reported the presence of print tuning in Chinese, but the question remained whether it would also be impaired in Chinese dyslexia. Here, we report data from 97 children (54 dyslexic, 43 controls) in 2nd or 3rd grade of primary school who participated in a repetition detection experiment with Chinese and Korean characters during an EEG recording. The ERP analysis revealed that the size of the N1 tuning did not differ between the groups. However, the N1 print tuning effect showed a different topography, as revealed by the 3-dimensional centroids of the positive and negative fields. The results suggest that print tuning also deviates in Chinese dyslexia and not just in alphabetic languages. However, the deviations may rather be related to the brain regions involved rather than to the strength of the response itself. Copyright © 2020 ARWA.