Abstract
Literacy acquisition is complex and multifactorial. Successful literacy acquisition places extreme demands on sensory and cognitive processes. Individuals with reading disorders demonstrate a range of linguistic, sensory, and cognitive deficits. In this chapter, the relationship between reading ability and the frequency-following response (FFR) is examined. The utility of the FFR in assessment of successful literacy and reading disorders is reviewed along with the use of FFR as an index of remediation. Finally, the chapter concludes with a discussion of current issues and future directions regarding the utility of the FFR as an objective neural metric of deficits in literacy disorders. Throughout these sections the distinct cognitive, linguistic, and experiential influences on the FFR are highlighted to further demonstrate how the FFR to speech may serve as an auditory biomarker to predict literacy disorders.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R01DC013315 (BC).
Compliance with Ethics Requirements
The authors, Rachel Reetzke, Zilong Xie, and Bharath Chandrasekaran, had no conflict of interest. Data represented in Fig. 10.1 was supported by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, National Institutes of Health (Grant R01DC013315 to BC). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official view of the National Institutes of Health.
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Reetzke, R., Xie, Z., Chandrasekaran, B. (2017). Neurobiology of Literacy and Reading Disorders. In: Kraus, N., Anderson, S., White-Schwoch, T., Fay, R., Popper, A. (eds) The Frequency-Following Response. Springer Handbook of Auditory Research, vol 61. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47944-6_10
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