Functional and time-course changes in single word production from childhood to adulthood

Abstract

Picture naming tasks are widely used both in children and adults to investigate language production for research and for assessment purposes. The main theoretical models of single word production based on the investigation of picture naming in adults provide a detailed account of the principal mental operations involved in the transformation of an abstract concept into articulated speech and their temporal dynamics. These models and in particular their time-course do not apply directly to children who display much longer production latencies than adults. Here we investigate the functional processes and the temporal dynamics of word encoding in school-age children and adults. ERPs were analysed from picture onset to the onset of articulation in 32 children and 32 adults performing the same overt picture naming task. Waveform analyses were not informative since differences appeared throughout the entire period, due to an early shift of waveform morphology and to larger amplitudes in children. However, when the sequences of periods of topographic stability were considered, different patterns of electric fields at scalp only appeared in approximately the first third of the analysed period, corresponding to the P1-N1 complex. From about 200 ms in adults and from 300 ms in children to articulation onset similar patterns of global topography were observed across groups but with a different time distribution. These results indicate qualitative changes in an early time-window, likely corresponding to pre-linguistic processes, and only quantitative changes in later time-windows, suggesting similar mental operations underlying lexical processes between age-school children and adults, with temporal dynamic changes during development.

Does the Relation between Rapid Automatized Naming and Reading Depend on Age or on Reading Level? A Behavioral and ERP Study

“…The second time-window falls within a P2 component (see Figure 2 ), although it is clearly delayed in the present study relative to studies with adult participants. A similar delay of component was previously reported in studies with children (Trauzettel-Klosinski et al, 2006 ; Laganaro et al, 2015 ). If one proportionally rescales adult's time-course estimates taking this delay into account, the second positive component peaking in the youngest children around 400 ms could be interpreted as a P2.…”

“…Poor and good readers differ specifically on two components: the N170 and the P2, reflecting early lexical access and lexico-phonolgical binding in the reading literature (Maurer et al, 2006 ). In the picture naming time-course, the P2 component is usually associated with lexical access (Indefrey, 2011 ) and the N170-like component seems to be specific to children (Laganaro et al, 2015 ). Here we report differences between good and poor readers in these two specific time-intervals, suggesting that the processing stages taking place between 200 and 500 ms in picture RAN are the cornerstone of the RAN-reading relationship.…”

“…The authors concluded that the differences in reaction times observed between children and adults rely on an acceleration of the processes subtending the task. Laganaro et al ( 2015 ) compared the ERPs of typically developing 7–8 year-olds, 10–12 year-olds, and adults on an overt picture naming task. The results on the two groups of children, showed that the speeding up observed in word production does not seem to rely on a linear rescaling of all ERP components, but on a selective shortening in the time-window usually associated with lexico-phonological encoding processes.…”

Picture naming yields highly consistent cortical activation patterns: test-retest reliability of magnetoencephalography recordings

“…We assessed consistent MEG evoked activity in two common tasks, picture naming and semantic judgement. Naming tasks are widely used in studying the process of language production in both clinical populations and healthy participants (Alario et al, 2004;Cornelissen et al, 2003;Laganaro et al, 2015;Liljeström et al, 2009). Naming a depicted item is suggested to incorporate all processing stages that are required for word production, ranging from recognizing the item to be named, to selecting an appropriate concept and word form, and finally to articulation (Indefrey and Levelt, 2004).…”

Abstracts 20th International Science of Aphasia Conference, Rome, September 2019

“…Alario et al, 2004;Newman & German, 2005;Barry et al, 2006;Perret & Bonin, 2018;Rabovsky et al, 2016), or by factors related to the semantic network (Meyer & Schvaneveldt 1971;Ferrand & New, 2003;McRae et al, 2012;Reilly & Desai, 2017;Tree & Hirsh, 2003;Gordon & Cheimariou, 2013). Word production also undergoes changes during lifespan and therefore varies according to the age of the speaker (Kavé et al, 2010;Laganaro et al, 2015). The influence of the semantic network has an impact on word production across the lifespan, but this effect seems specific to the network of the age-group of the speaker (Krethlow et al, subm).…”