EEG N1 Specialization to Print in Chinese Primary School Students: Developmental Trajectories, Longitudinal Changes, and Individual Differences

Neural specialization for print can be indexed by the left-lateralized N1 response as a tuning gradient to visual words, indicated by sensitivity (character vs. visual control) and selectivity (character vs. character-like stimuli). Forty-five Chinese children (20 boys) were recorded with EEG twice with a 2-year interval during a character decision task (T1, 2016-2017: 7-9 years old; T2, 2018-2020: 9-11). Character N1 amplitude decreased faster with age (7-11 years) compared to non-character N1, and character and character-like N1 became less right-lateralized. T1 better readers showed more longitudinal decrease of print sensitivity and more left-lateralized T2 print sensitivity and selectivity. To conclude, reading skill drives functional neural efficiency for processing print, and the left hemisphere may be a linguistically universal neural mechanism for reading development.