Neural oscillations during predictive sentence processing in young children.

The neural correlates of predictive processing in language, critical for efficient sentence comprehension, is well documented in adults. Specifically, adults exhibit alpha power (9-12 Hz) suppression when processing high versus low predictability sentences. This study explores whether young children exhibit similar neural mechanisms.

The Necessity of Taking Culture and Context into Account When Studying the Relationship between Socioeconomic Status and Brain Development.

Decades of research has revealed a relationship between childhood socioeconomic status (SES) and brain development at the structural and functional levels. Of particular note is the distinction between income and maternal education, two highly correlated factors which seem to influence brain development through distinct pathways. Specifically, while a families' income-to-needs ratio is linked with physiological stress and household chaos, caregiver education influences the day-to-day language environment a child is exposed to.

Development of Gamma Oscillation during Sentence Processing in Early Adolescence: Insights into the Maturation of Semantic Processing.

Children's ability to retrieve word meanings and incorporate them into sentences, along with the neural structures that support these skills, continues to evolve throughout adolescence. Theta (4-8 Hz) activity that corresponds to word retrieval in children decreases in power and becomes more localized with age. This bottom-up word retrieval is often paired with changes in gamma (31-70 Hz), which are thought to reflect semantic unification in adults.

Rethinking household size and children's language environment.

The number of U.S. children living in households with extended families has greatly increased in the last 4 decades.

The power of the written word: Comparing word meaning inferencing from auditory and written modalities throughout grade school.

Previous research indicates that word learning from auditory contexts may be more effective than written context at least through fourth grade. However, no study has examined contextual differences in word learning in older school-aged children when reading abilities are more developed. Here we examined developmental differences in children's ability to deduce the meanings of unknown words from the surrounding linguistic context in the auditory and written modalities and sought to identify the most important predictors of success in each modality.

What do children's errors tell us about the strategies used during a word inferencing task?

A vital and often overlooked aspect of word learning is the ability to establish deep semantic knowledge by adjusting and fine-tuning new word meanings as information becomes available. Here we studied differences in children's ability to update incorrect or incomplete word meanings by studying error types in a word inferencing task. The participants, 45 8- and 9-year-olds, read three sentences that all ended with the same nonsense word and were asked to identify the meaning of the last word.

Age and vocabulary knowledge differentially influence the N400 and theta responses during semantic retrieval.

Using electroencephalography (EEG) to study the neural oscillations supporting language development is increasingly common; however, a clear understanding of the relationship between neural oscillations and traditional Event Related Potentials (ERPs) is needed to disentangle how maturation of language-related neural networks supports semantic processing throughout grade school. Theta and the N400 are both thought to index semantic retrieval but, in adults, are only weakly correlated with one another indicating they may measure somewhat unique aspects of retrieval. Here, we studied the relationship between the N400 amplitude and theta power during semantic retrieval with key indicators of language abilities including age, vocabulary, reading comprehension and phonological memory in 226 children ages 8-15 years.

Neural patterns elicited by lexical processing in adolescents with specific language impairment: support for the procedural deficit hypothesis?

Background: Deficits in procedural memory have been proposed to account for the language deficits in specific language impairment (SLI). A key aspect of the procedural deficit hypothesis (PDH) account of SLI is that declarative memory is intact and functions as a compensatory mechanism in the acquisition of language in individuals with SLI. The current study examined the neural correlates of lexical-phonological and lexical-semantic processing with respect to these predictions in a group of adolescents with SLI with procedural memory impairment and a group of chronologically age-matched (CA) normal controls.

Temporal and topographical changes in theta power between middle childhood and adolescence during sentence comprehension.

Time frequency analysis of the EEG is increasingly used to study the neural oscillations supporting language comprehension. Although this method holds promise for developmental research, most existing work focuses on adults. Theta power (4-8 Hz) in particular often corresponds to semantic processing of words in isolation and in ongoing text.

Gender differences in mothers' spatial language use and children's mental rotation abilities in Preschool and Kindergarten.

Mental rotation has emerged as an important predictor of success in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM). By the age of 4.5 years, boys outperform girls in these abilities.

Multimodal feature binding in object memory retrieval using event-related potentials: Implications for models of semantic memory.

To test the hypothesis that semantic processes are represented in multiple subsystems, we recorded electroencephalogram (EEG) as we elicited object memories using the modified Semantic Object Retrieval Test, during which an object feature, presented as a visual word [VW], an auditory word [AW], or a picture [Pic], was followed by a second feature always presented as a visual word. We performed both hypothesis-driven and data-driven analyses using event-related potentials (ERPs) time locked to the second stimulus. We replicated a previously reported left fronto-temporal ERP effect (750-1000 ms post-stimulus) in the VW task, and also found that this ERP component was only present during object memory retrieval in verbal (VW, AW) as opposed to non-verbal (Pic) stimulus types.

Using the N400 event-related potential to study word learning from context in children from low- and higher-socioeconomic status homes.

Children from low-socioeconomic status (SES) homes have significantly smaller vocabularies than their higher-SES peers, a gap that increases over the course of the school years. One reason for the increase in this vocabulary gap during the school years is that children from low-SES homes learn fewer words from context than their higher-SES peers. To better understand how the process of word learning from context might differ in children related to SES, we investigated changes in the N400 event-related potential (ERP) as children from low- and higher-SES homes learned new words using only the surrounding linguistic context.

Socioeconomic status related differences in resting state EEG activity correspond to differences in vocabulary and working memory in grade school.

There is increasing evidence that children from low income homes exhibit differences in brain, language and cognitive development. To better understand these differences and how they relate to one another, we compared the resting state EEG of forty-five 8-15-year-olds from low-income homes and 45 age and sex matched children from higher income homes who completed a battery of language and cognitive assessments. Children from low income homes performed worse on language tasks and exhibited differences in resting state EEG including more theta and less alpha power.

Developmental differences in the neural correlates supporting semantics and syntax during sentence processing.

School-aged and adolescent children continue to demonstrate improvements in how they integrate and comprehend real-time, auditory language over this developmental time period, which can have important implications for academic and social success. To better understand developmental changes in the neural processes engaged during language comprehension in this age group, we use electroencephalography to investigate how 8-9 year old, 12-13 year olds, and adults process semantics and syntax in naturally paced, auditory sentences. Participants listened to semantically and syntactically correct and incorrect sentences and were asked to complete an acceptability judgment task.

Developmental differences in the neural oscillations underlying auditory sentence processing in children and adults.

Although very young children seem to process ongoing language quickly and effortlessly, neuroimaging and behavioral studies reveal that children continue to mature in their language skills through adolescence. During this prolonged development, children likely engage the same basic cognitive processes and neural mechanisms to perform language tasks as adults, but in somewhat different ways. In this study we used time frequency analysis of EEG to identify developmental differences in the engagement of neural oscillations between children (ages 10-12) and adults while listening to naturally-paced sentences.

Identifying the relationship between oscillatory dynamics and event-related responses.

Event related potentials (ERPs) and time frequency analysis of the EEG can identify the temporally distinct coordination of groups of neurons across brain regions during sentence processing. Although there are strong arguments that ERP components and neural oscillations are driven by the same changes in the neural signal, others argue that the lack of clear associations between the two suggests oscillatory dynamics are more than just time frequency representations of ERP components, making it unclear how the two are related. The current study seeks to examine the neural activity underlying auditory sentence processing of both semantic and syntactic errors to clarify if ERP and time frequency analyses identify the same or unique neural responses.

Vocabulary knowledge mediates the link between socioeconomic status and word learning in grade school.

The relationship between children's slow vocabulary growth and the family's low socioeconomic status (SES) has been well documented. However, previous studies have often focused on infants or preschoolers and primarily used static measures of vocabulary at multiple time points. To date, there is no research investigating whether SES predicts a child's word learning abilities in grade school and, if so, what mediates this relationship.

Theta and Alpha Alterations in Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment in Semantic Go/NoGo Tasks.

Growing evidence suggests that cognitive control processes are impaired in amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI); however the nature of these alterations needs further examination. The current study examined differences in electroencephalographic theta and alpha power related to cognitive control processes involving response execution and response inhibition in 22 individuals with aMCI and 22 age-, sex-, and education-matched cognitively normal controls. Two Go/NoGo tasks involving semantic categorization were used.

Common and differential electrophysiological mechanisms underlying semantic object memory retrieval probed by features presented in different stimulus types.

How the brain combines the neural representations of features that comprise an object in order to activate a coherent object memory is poorly understood, especially when the features are presented in different modalities (visual vs. auditory) and domains (verbal vs. nonverbal).

Do acting out verbs with dolls and comparison learning between scenes boost toddlers' verb comprehension?

To better understand how toddlers integrate multiple learning strategies to acquire verbs, we compared sensorimotor recruitment and comparison learning because both strategies are thought to boost children's access to scene-level information. For sensorimotor recruitment, we tested having toddlers use dolls as agents and compared this strategy with having toddlers observe another person enact verbs with dolls. For comparison learning, we compared providing pairs of: (a) training scenes in which animate objects with similar body-shapes maintained agent/patient roles with (b) scenes in which objects with dissimilar body-shapes switched agent/patient roles.

The Effects of Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment on Go/NoGo Semantic Categorization Task Performance and Event-Related Potentials.

We examined the effects of amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) on behavioral (response times and error rates) and scalp-recorded event-related potential (ERP) measures of response execution and inhibition, using Go/NoGo tasks involving basic and superordinate semantic categorization. Twenty-five aMCI (16 F; 68.5±8 years) and 25 age- and gender-matched normal control subjects (16 F; 65.

Developmental differences in beta and theta power during sentence processing.

Although very young children process ongoing language quickly and effortlessly, research indicates that they continue to improve and mature in their language skills through adolescence. This prolonged development may be related to differing engagement of semantic and syntactic processes. This study used event related potentials and time frequency analysis of EEG to identify developmental differences in neural engagement as children (ages 10-12) and adults performed an auditory verb agreement grammaticality judgment task.

Effects of age on cognitive control during semantic categorization.

We used event-related potentials (ERPs) to study age effects of perceptual (basic-level) vs. perceptual-semantic (superordinate-level) categorization on cognitive control using the go/nogo paradigm. Twenty-two younger (11 M; 21 ± 2.