Tapping to a beat in synchrony predicts brain print sensitivity in pre-readers
Date
2019Author
Ríos-López, Paula
Molinaro, Nicola
Lallier, Marie
Metadata
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Paula Ríos-López, Nicola Molinaro, Marie Lallier, Tapping to a beat in synchrony predicts brain print sensitivity in pre-readers, Brain and Language, Volume 199, 2019, 104693, ISSN 0093-934X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2019.104693.
Abstract
This longitudinal study was aimed at testing the relation between rhythm sensitivity and behavioural and neural orthographic sensitivity in pre-reading stages. Basque-speaking children performed several behavioural and EEG tasks at two time points prior to formal reading acquisition (T1: 4 years old; T2: 5 years old). Neural sensitivity to print was measured via a novel child friendly N170-elicitation paradigm. Our results highlight a transversal and longitudinal relation between rhythm sensitivity and letter name knowledge in pre-reading children. Moreover, they show that children’s rhythm sensitivity predicts a significant part of the variance of their N170 response one year later, highlighting the potential of rhythm tasks to predict future orthographic sensitivity in pre-reading stages. Interestingly, the relation between rhythmic skills and print sensitivity was not mediated by the children’s phonological short-term memory. Our results provide novel evidence on the importance of rhythm sensitivity for the development of early orthographic sensitivity.