Project NEDA
Neural Development of Auditory Processing and its Relevance for the Development of Literacy
The project NEDA investigates the relationship between the development of reading and spelling skills and the development of neural auditory processing in elementary school children.
In Germany about 4% of elementary school children with average intelligence suffer from difficulties in reading or spelling. The exact causes of these problems are still under discussion, whereas a deficit in phonological processing is well established. This means that impaired children have problems to comprehend that words consist of syllables and these syllables consist of particular phonemes. Nevertheless, it is still unsolved whether phonological deficits are the primary cause of the reading and spelling problems or whether they are secondary to basic auditory processing deficits.
NEDA is a longitudinal study that aims to investigate this topic. For this purpose, we measure neural auditory processing with the event-related potential Mismatch Negativity (MMN), that is recorded using electroencephalography (EEG). In addition, we examine the children’s reading and spelling ability and different aspects of phonological processing with various psychometric tests.
Funding
