Early delta cortical tracking to non-verbal auditory stimuli predicts reading skills: A one-year longitudinal study

The precision of cortical tracking of auditory rhythmic stimuli in low frequency ranges coding for prosodic (delta) and syllabic (theta) amplitude modulations in the speech signal has been proposed to contribute to the development of phonological processing and reading acquisition. The present study investigates the role of low frequency cortical tracking of non-verbal auditory stimuli in reading acquisition through a longitudinal design from before the onset of formal reading instruction until one year afterwards. At time one, 40 prereading children performed a passive listening task of amplitude modulated white noise presented in the delta (2 Hz) and theta (4 Hz) frequency bands, while their neural activity was recorded via EEG. At time two, at the end of first grade, childrens reading skills were assessed. Results show significant cortical tracking in prereading children at both frequencies, with larger responses for theta than for delta rate non-verbal auditory stimuli. Importantly, only pre-reding cortical tracking measures for delta rate stimuli predicted reading acquisition one year later. These findings underscore the role of early neural synchronization to delta rate rhythmic auditory stimuli to reading acquisition and support the potential important role of early prosodic processing for the development of future reading skills.