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Brain test predicts future literacy of pre-reading children
A 30-minute neurophysiological test predicted a child’s pre-reading test scores, as well as performance on multiple tests of emergent literacy levels 1 year later, according to a recent study.
“A well-acknowledged gap in our understanding of the biology of reading is what biological constraints are instantiated in the nervous system prior to reading instruction,” Nina Kraus, PhD, director of the auditory neuroscience laboratory at Northwestern University, and colleagues wrote. “We suggest that the neurophysiological markers we report here provide a biological looking glass into a child’s future literacy.”
The researchers compiled a cohort of 57 children aged 3 to 4 years who had not yet learned to read. Children sat in a sound booth with electrodes placed on their heads to record neurophysiological information based on the auditory tests being conducted. The tests recorded how well children deciphered speech, specifically the neural processing of consonants, against chaotic background noise.
“Every time the brain responds to sound it gives off electricity, so we can capture how the brain pulls speech out of the noise,” Kraus said in a press release. “We can see with extreme granularity how well the brain extracts each meaningful detail in speech.”
Results indicated that the neural coding of consonants against background noise accurately predicted phonological processing in the majority of pre-readers. The researchers were able to predict scores within a median difference of 1.97 points on the pre-reading test.
By taking the “consonants-in-noise-score” drawn from the research model, researchers predicted future literacy, future sight word reading, and future composite reading test scores. These results were achieved by bringing 34 of the original study participants back after 1 year, for further literacy and neurophysiological testing.
The researchers suggested that these study results prove that the neural coding of consonants in noise can predict future standardized literacy test scores, even before students have the ability to read. They recommended this technology be expanded on and implemented to target children with reading deficits for interventions as early as possible.
“Efforts to promote literacy during early childhood can be tremendously effective, and our hope is that these results open a new avenue of early identification to provide children access to these crucial interventions,” Kraus and colleagues wrote. – by David Costill
Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.
