Abstract
School-age reading skills are associated with and predicted by preschool-age cognitive risk factors for dyslexia, such as deficits in phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, letter knowledge, and verbal short-term memory. In addition, evidence exists that problems in morphological information processing could be considered a risk factor for dyslexia. In the present study, 27 children at pre-school age and the same 27 children at first grade age performed a morphological awareness task while their brain responses were measured with magnetoencephalography. Our aim was to examine how derivational morphology in Finnish language, and concomitant accuracy and reaction times are associated with first grade reading, in addition to the preschool age reading-related cognitive skills. The results replicated earlier findings; we found significant correlations between pre-school phonological skills and first-grade reading, pre-school rapid naming and first-grade reading, and pre-school verbal short-term memory and first-grade reading. The results also revealed a significant correlation between the pre-school children's reaction time for correctly derived words in the morphological task and the first-grade children's performance in rapid automatized naming for letters. No significant correlations were found between brain activation measures of morphological processing and first-grade reading.
Highlights
The development of reading is a critically, increasingly important skill in our modern society
Consistent correlations were found between the ages in the block design, vocabulary, digit span, phonological processing, rapid automatized naming (RAN) objects, word list reading and non-word list reading tasks after the false discovery rate (FDR) correction
How brain responses during the MEG morphological task at pre-school are associated with cognitive skills and reading at the first grade
Summary
The development of reading is a critically, increasingly important skill in our modern society. Learning to read is a continuous process that starts to develop during pre-school and kindergarten, before the starting point of formal education. It is evident that morphological information processing is an essential feature of typical reading acquisition. Behavioral and Brain Measures of Morphological Processing in Children (Carlisle, 2003; Kuo and Anderson, 2006). The aim of the current study was to longitudinally examine whether the neural underpinnings of morphological information processing in preschool children with and without familial risk for dyslexia can be predictors of reading development in first grade. We aimed to examine whether poor morphological processing can be considered a risk factor for reading difficulties (Louleli et al, 2020; Louleli et al, under review), especially in a morphologically rich language such as Finnish
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