Fixation-related potentials in naming speed: A combined EEG and eye-tracking study on children with dyslexia

Christoforos Christoforou,Argyro Fella,Paavo H.T Leppänen,George K Georgiou,Timothy C Papadopoulos

doi:10.1016/j.clinph.2021.08.013

Abstract

ObjectiveWe combined electroencephalography (EEG) and eye-tracking recordings to examine the underlying factors elicited during the serial Rapid-Automatized Naming (RAN) task that may differentiate between children with dyslexia (DYS) and chronological age controls (CAC). MethodsThirty children with DYS and 30 CAC (Mage = 9.79 years; age range 7.6 through 12.1 years) performed a set of serial RAN tasks. We extracted fixation-related potentials (FRPs) under phonologically similar (rime-confound) or visually similar (resembling lowercase letters) and dissimilar (non-confounding and discrete uppercase letters, respectively) control tasks. ResultsResults revealed significant differences in FRP amplitudes between DYS and CAC groups under the phonologically similar and phonologically non-confounding conditions. No differences were observed in the case of the visual conditions. Moreover, regression analysis showed that the average amplitude of the extracted components significantly predicted RAN performance. ConclusionFRPs capture neural components during the serial RAN task informative of differences between DYS and CAC and establish a relationship between neurocognitive processes during serial RAN and dyslexia. SignificanceWe suggest our approach as a methodological model for the concurrent analysis of neurophysiological and eye-gaze data to decipher the role of RAN in reading.

Highlights

One of the most examined underlying cognitive factors of reading development and dyslexia is naming speed, known as rapid automatized naming (RAN)
We examine these neurophysiological components combining electroencephalography (EEG) and eye-tracking recordings under a set of phonological and visual confounding serial RAN tasks to address the limitations of prior research
We considered the mean amplitude of each Fixation-Related Potentials (FRP) across the subset of channels and time samples associated with the identified spatio-temporal cluster as the independent variable

Summary

Introduction

One of the most examined underlying cognitive factors of reading development and dyslexia is naming speed, known as rapid automatized naming (RAN). RAN-reading relationship have focused on the construct’s conceptualization (e.g., Papadopoulos et al, 2016) and its assessment (e.g., Georgiou et al, 2013). This focus is based on the strong relationship reported between RAN and reading at various stages of children’s development (e.g., Caravolas et al, 2013; Georgiou et al, 2014; Kirby et al, 2003; Puolakanaho et al, 2007) and adults (e.g., Araújo et al, 2019). The purpose of the present study was to go one step further and combine electroencephalography (EEG) and eye-tracking recordings and examine the underlying components of RAN through fixation-related potentials

Methods

Results

Conclusion