Altered responses to tone and phoneme mismatch in kindergartners at familial dyslexia risk

Differences in automatic auditory processing between kindergartners with (n = 31) and without (n = 29) familial dyslexia risk were investigated using frequency and phoneme mismatch negativity (MMN) paradigms with small deviance and short intervals. During an early mismatch response segment children at risk tended to have more mid-frontal positivity than controls, especially to phoneme deviance. Significant group differences were found in the late MMN segment, where the mismatch response of children at risk was attenuated to frequency deviance and less left lateralised to phoneme deviance. This indicates deviant automatic processing of phoneme and simple tone deviance in children at risk. These differences might be just related to the dyslexia risk or more specifically to future reading difficulties and thus be useful for early recognition of dyslexia.