Age-Related Characteristics of the Formation of Neurophysiological Mechanisms of the Phonemic, Grammatical, and Semantic Linguistic Levels

The structure of regional interactions of brain bioelectric potentials has been studied during performance by adults (n= 18) and children aged five to six (n= 15) and eight to nine years (n= 17) of three analytical verbal tasks: recognition of a given phoneme in the context of auditory presented words and recognition of grammatical and semantic mistakes in auditory presented sentences. According to the data of cross-correlation and coherent EEG analyses, adults and, to a lesser extent, children of both age groups showed a noticeable intensification of interhemispheric interaction during the performance of all three tasks, especially between temporal areas, with relatively minor changes in ipsilateral EEG relations. Children were shown to have elements of immaturity of neurophysiological mechanisms underlying various aspects of the language function,
such as the analysis of the grammatical formation of a verbal utterance and the semantic content of a phrase.
The results also suggest that the level of maturation of neurophysiological mechanisms underlying phonemic
analysis is somewhat higher at these age stages than the level of maturity of central mechanisms responsible for the analysis of the semantic content and grammatical construction of a phrase.

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