Auditory and Visual Evoked Responses in Children with Familial Reading Disabilities

Abstract

Amplitudes of auditory and visual evoked responses from right and left hemispheres were compared in subjects from three families having more than one person with reading problems. Contrary to expectations, the dyslexic members of these families did not demonstrate a flattening of the evoked responses over the left hemisphere Furthermore, there were no differences between dyslexic and normal members of the same family. Investigation of dyslexic children from 18 additional families also demonstrated no systematic alteration of the evoked responses over the left hemisphere. Although some degree of hemispheric asymmetry cannot be ruled out completely, measurement of evoked responses appears to have little diagnostic value, at present, in the evaluation of individual children or families.

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