Saint-Petersburg State University, Saint-Petersburg, Russian Federation.
Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA.
Sci Rep. 2019 Mar 12;9(1):4252. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-40007-9.
Impoverished early care environments are associated with developmental deficits in children raised in institutional settings. Despite the accumulation of evidence regarding deficits in general cognitive functioning in this population, less is known about the impact of institutionalization on language development at the level of brain and behavior. We examined language outcomes in young adults and adolescents raised in institutions (n = 23) as compared to their socioeconomic status and age peers raised in biological families (n = 24) using a behavioral language assessment and linguistic event-related potentials (ERPs). Controlling for intelligence, adults with a history of institutionalization demonstrated deficits in lexical and grammatical development and spelling. Analyses of ERP data revealed significant group differences in the dynamic processing of linguistic stimuli. Adults with a history of institutionalization displayed reduced neural sensitivity to violations of word expectancy, leading to reduced condition effects for temporo-spatial factors that tentatively corresponded to the N200, P300/N400, and phonological mismatch negativity. The results suggest that language is a vulnerable domain in adults with a history of institutionalization, the deficits in which are not explained by general developmental delays, and point to the pivotal role of early linguistic environment in the development of the neural networks involved in language processing.
贫困的早期照护环境与在机构环境中长大的儿童的发展缺陷有关。尽管关于这一人群一般认知功能缺陷的证据不断积累，但对于机构化对语言发展在大脑和行为层面的影响，人们了解得较少。我们使用行为语言评估和语言事件相关电位（ERPs），比较了在机构中长大的年轻人和青少年（n=23）与他们在生物家庭中长大的社会经济地位和年龄相匹配的同龄人（n=24）的语言结果。在控制智力的情况下，有机构经历的成年人在词汇和语法发展以及拼写方面表现出缺陷。ERP 数据分析显示，语言刺激的动态处理存在显著的组间差异。有机构经历的成年人对违反单词预期的反应能力下降，导致 temporo-spatial 因素的条件效应降低，这些因素暂时与 N200、P300/N400 和语音不匹配负波相对应。研究结果表明，语言是有机构经历的成年人的一个脆弱领域，其缺陷不能用一般发育迟缓来解释，并指出早期语言环境在参与语言处理的神经网络发展中的关键作用。
