TY - JOUR

T1 - Text integration processes in children with Childhood Epilepsy with Centro-Temporal Spikes

AU - Francey, Gillian

AU - Currie, Nicola

AU - Lew, Adina

AU - de Goede, Dr Christian

AU - Basu, Helen

AU - Cain, Kate

PY - 2023/5/31

Y1 - 2023/5/31

N2 - Although Childhood Epilepsy with Centro-Temporal Spikes (CECTS) is considered a ‘benign’ form of epilepsy, word reading, listening comprehension, and reading comprehension difficulties have been reported. We examined two core skills for text comprehension, coherence monitoring and inference generation, in children with CECTS and compared performance with typically developing controls. Children with CECTS (n=23; 9 females; mean age 9y 0m) and the comparison group (n=38; 14 females; mean age 9y 1m) completed two tasks. For coherence monitoring they heard 24 narrative texts, 16 containing two inconsistent sentences, and responded to a yes/no question to assess identification of the inconsistency after each text; for inference making they heard 16 texts designed to elicit a target inference by integrating information in two sentences and responded to a yes/no question to assess generation of the inference. In both tasks there was a near condition, in which critical sentences were adjacent, and a far condition in which these sentences were separated by filler sentences. Accuracy to the question and the processing time for critical sentences in the text were measured. We used listening comprehension tasks to control for variation in word reading ability. Mixed effects analyses for each task revealed that children with CECTS show comparable levels of accuracy to age-matched peers in these tasks tapping two core text integration skills: detection of inconsistencies and generation of inferences. However, they take longer to process texts indicating a likely source of their listening and reading comprehension difficulties.

AB - Although Childhood Epilepsy with Centro-Temporal Spikes (CECTS) is considered a ‘benign’ form of epilepsy, word reading, listening comprehension, and reading comprehension difficulties have been reported. We examined two core skills for text comprehension, coherence monitoring and inference generation, in children with CECTS and compared performance with typically developing controls. Children with CECTS (n=23; 9 females; mean age 9y 0m) and the comparison group (n=38; 14 females; mean age 9y 1m) completed two tasks. For coherence monitoring they heard 24 narrative texts, 16 containing two inconsistent sentences, and responded to a yes/no question to assess identification of the inconsistency after each text; for inference making they heard 16 texts designed to elicit a target inference by integrating information in two sentences and responded to a yes/no question to assess generation of the inference. In both tasks there was a near condition, in which critical sentences were adjacent, and a far condition in which these sentences were separated by filler sentences. Accuracy to the question and the processing time for critical sentences in the text were measured. We used listening comprehension tasks to control for variation in word reading ability. Mixed effects analyses for each task revealed that children with CECTS show comparable levels of accuracy to age-matched peers in these tasks tapping two core text integration skills: detection of inconsistencies and generation of inferences. However, they take longer to process texts indicating a likely source of their listening and reading comprehension difficulties.

KW - Childhood Epilepsy with Centro-Temporal Spikes

KW - Text integration

KW - Listening comprehension

KW - Reading comprehension

KW - Processing time

U2 - 10.1016/j.eplepsyres.2023.107136

DO - 10.1016/j.eplepsyres.2023.107136

M3 - Journal article

VL - 192

JO - Epilepsy Research

JF - Epilepsy Research

SN - 0920-1211

M1 - 107136

ER -