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Orthographic Processing of Developmental Dyslexic Children in China: Evidence from an Event-Related Potential Study

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Abstract

Objective

This study aimed to explore the orthographic processing of simplified Chinese characters in developmental dyslexic children in Kashgar, Xinjiang, China, and provide a theoretical basis for intervention strategies for developmental dyslexia in Chinese.

Methods

Using event-related potential (ERP) measures, 18 developmental dyslexic children and 23 typically developing children performed a character decision task with three types of stimuli: real characters (RCs), pseudocharacters (PCs), and noncharacters (NCs).

Results

Behavioral results showed that the control children displayed a faster and higher accurate performance than the dyslexic children across PCs and NCs. ERP data revealed that the RCs and PCs elicited a stronger P200 than the NCs. Compared with the RCs and NCs, children in the control group showed more N400 negatives for PCs. It is worth mentioning that dyslexic children did not show any difference on N400, which reflected the insufficient orthographic processing of dyslexic children in China.

Conclusion

These results show that Chinese dyslexic children had orthographic processing defects.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the children and parents who participated in this study for their tremendous contributions to this work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Medical College, Shihezi University, Shihezi, 832002, China

    Shu-ting Tang, Fang-fang Liu, Zeng-chun Li, Ke-gao Deng, Ran-ran Song & Peng-xiang Zuo

  2. School of Public Health, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430030, China

    Ran-ran Song

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  1. Shu-ting Tang
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  2. Fang-fang Liu
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  3. Zeng-chun Li
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  4. Ke-gao Deng
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  5. Ran-ran Song
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Ran-ran Song or Peng-xiang Zuo.

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Conflict of Interest Statement

There are no conflicts of interest to declare.

This study was supported in part by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 81760597).

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Tang, St., Liu, Ff., Li, Zc. et al. Orthographic Processing of Developmental Dyslexic Children in China: Evidence from an Event-Related Potential Study. CURR MED SCI 41, 1239–1246 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11596-021-2468-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11596-021-2468-1

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