EEG correlates of cerebral engagement in reading tasks

This study evaluated the utility of electroencephalographic (EEG) measures as indices of regional cerebral engagement activation during reading in neurologically intact adult volunteers. EEG was recorded from 16 scalp locations as participants performed four visual detection tasks designed to tap into increasingly more complex operations regularly involved in reading, namely visual-spatial, orthographic, phonological, and semantic. EEG records were quantified using power spectrum measures in four frequency bands (delta, theta, alpha, beta1, and beta2), in addition to a non-linear estimate of signal complexity (prediction error). Results showed that (1) changes in spectral power between pairs of reading tasks, and (2) regional variations in EEG measures for each task, were restricted to signals recorded over the left hemisphere. These findings are in agreement with knowledge regarding left hemisphere involvement in higher level component processes of reading

Toward Exploiting EEG Input in a Reading Tutor

Abstract. A new type of sensor for students ’ mental states is a single-channel EEG headset simple enough to use in schools. Using its signal from adults and children reading text and isolated words, both aloud and silently, we train and test classifiers to tell easy from hard sentences, and to distinguish among easy words, hard words, pseudo-words, and unpronounceable strings. We also identify which EEG components appear sensitive to which lexical features. Better-than-chance performance shows promise for tutors to use EEG at school