Exploring Speech-Evoked N400 Responses in Children with Listening Difficulties

Listening difficulties (LiD), a collection of symptoms that include impaired perception of speech under degraded or noisy conditions, among other challenges, are often reported by individuals with little or no peripheral hearing loss. In the context of Auditory Processing Disorder (APD), a clinical construct that is marked by LiD, such symptoms were historically ascribed to deficits in central auditory processing. However, a recent body of research using a large sample of children with LiD has revealed little evidence of central auditory deficit. Rather, children with LiD show poor cognitive function versus their typically-developing (TD) peers, including altered cortical processing of speech, as measured via functional magnetic resonance imaging. The goal of the present study was to examine whether LiD is marked by alterations in the N400 evoked response to speech stimuli, a response that reflects semantic integration.