Relation of spontaneous and evoked brain activity to language development in young children
Abstract
Separate studies have shown connections between spontaneous alpha oscillations and language ability in 4-6 year-olds, and between auditory evoked potential (AEP) maturity and language in 7-10-year-olds. The thesis aimed to further our understanding of how these spontaneous and evoked neural measures relate to language development in younger children than previously studied.
In this thesis, I first propose a method to investigate spontaneous alpha oscillations and language in 1-4-year-olds. Next, I examined alpha oscillations, AEP maturity, and language ability in 5-6-year-olds. Results revealed that AEP maturity did not predict language ability and correlated with alpha long-range-temporal-correlation but not with alpha power or flexibility. Next, I examined the possibility that this study did not have enough AEP trials. Using a new index called standardized measurement error, I found that AEP trial-by-trial noise decreases with age between 4-7 years, suggesting that future studies of AEP maturity may need more trials for younger ages.