Electroencephalographic Identifiers of Reading Abilities in Turkish Language

Fluent reading requires learning the print knowledge of alphabet symbols (letters), rapid automatic naming and phonological awareness skills. In this study, electroencephalographic brain signals of 17 subjects were measured with an eMotiv EPOC+ headset before, during and after a computer-based training session. For the training, distorted letter prints were created by rotating Turkish letters 180 degrees along the y-axis. Using these distorted letters two different texts, each 150 words in length, were created. Subjects were asked to read these texts before and after the training session. We investigated whether there is an improvement in reading speed and a decrease in number of errors due to the computer-based training and whether we can correlate the success of training with any characteristic of any EEG brain signals. Based on our analysis of the EEG data collected throughout the experiment, we observed that the frequency modulation across resting states in the Theta at the Broca Area (F7 and FC5) predicts individual reading performance measures. Even though there exist a variety of studies indicating a relation of Theta band power and learning performance, EEG measurements with eMotiv EPOC+ had not been previously reported with a Turkish alphabet learning task.