School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, The University of Western Ontario, London, ON, N6G 1H1, Canada.
Department of Psychology, The University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada.
Eur J Neurosci. 2018 Jan;47(1):69-76. doi: 10.1111/ejn.13785.
Processing of auditory information in the cortex continues to develop into later childhood and adolescence. Recent research has indicated that intraclass correlation (ICC) is the best method for capturing maturation in auditory event-related potentials (AEPs) of school-age children. However, the sensitivity of the ICC approach in discerning AEP changes in children has not been consistently demonstrated and positive results have not been replicated. We attempted this replication and further explored whether AEP maturation estimated using the ICC approach predicts cognitive and linguistic abilities in addition to chronological age. We measured AEPs in response to simple tones in groups of 7-, 8-, 9- and 10-year olds with typical development (N = 67) and used ICC to estimate the age equivalent of each child's AEP (AEP-age). Results indicated that ICC differentiated 7- to 8-year-old children from 9- to 10-year-old children and that AEP-age predicted both chronological age and significant, unique variance in language ability, but not in nonverbal IQ. Our findings support the view that auditory organization in children reflects both general developmental maturation and more specific development of language skills, and support the future use of AEP-age to identify and understand individual differences in brain maturation in typically developing and clinical populations.
听觉信息在大脑皮层中的处理过程一直持续到儿童后期和青少年时期。最近的研究表明，组内相关系数（ICC）是捕捉学龄儿童听觉事件相关电位（AEPs）成熟度的最佳方法。然而，ICC 方法在辨别儿童 AEP 变化方面的敏感性尚未得到一致证明，并且阳性结果也未得到复制。我们尝试了这种复制，并进一步探讨了使用 ICC 方法估计的 AEP 成熟度是否可以预测认知和语言能力，以及年龄。我们测量了具有典型发育的 7 岁、8 岁、9 岁和 10 岁儿童（N=67）对简单音调的 AEPs，并使用 ICC 来估计每个儿童 AEP 的年龄当量（AEP-age）。结果表明，ICC 区分了 7 岁至 8 岁的儿童和 9 岁至 10 岁的儿童，并且 AEP-age 预测了年龄和语言能力的显著、独特的差异，但不能预测非语言智商。我们的研究结果支持以下观点，即儿童的听觉组织反映了一般发育成熟和语言技能的更特定发展，并支持未来使用 AEP-age 来识别和理解典型发育和临床人群中大脑成熟的个体差异。
