Neurophysiological evidence for the role of inhibitory control in reading for children with reading difficulties

The present study takes a neurophysiological approach to investigate the inhibitory processes of children with reading difficulties. The N2, an event-related potential related to inhibitory control, was elicited in a Go/No-go task with an emotional condition and a neutral condition. We compared the N2 amplitudes in children with and without reading difficulties and tested the associations between N2 amplitudes and reading skills. Fifty-two English-speaking elementary schoolers (32 typically developing children and 20 children with reading difficulties) completed standardized reading-language tests and a Go/No-go task with a neutral condition and an emotional condition. The No-go N2 amplitude and the ∆N2 (a difference between Go and No-go amplitudes) were extracted. First, we found a group difference; typically developing children showed significantly different Go and No-go N2 amplitudes, but children with reading difficulties did not. Second, the emotional ∆N2 predicted unique variance in reading comprehension beyond working memory, receptive vocabulary, and word reading efficiency. The present study advances our theoretical understanding of reading by providing neurophysiological evidence for the role of inhibitory processes in reading comprehension. The present study is unique in examining the interaction between emotion and inhibitory processes as it relates to reading. The findings also lay the foundation for identifying neural markers of reading difficulties.