Learning Potential as a Dynamic Component of Academic Intelligence: An fNIRS-Based Dynamic Assessment Study of English Reading Comprehension

Foreign language reading comprehension is a critical indicator of university students’ academic cognitive ability and global competence, yet effectively assessing their latent learning potential remains a major challenge. Therefore, from a neurocognitive perspective, this study combined functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) with dynamic assessment (DA) to investigate the activation characteristics of the left frontal and temporal regions in non-English majors during reading tasks across two difficulty levels (CET-4/CET-6) and two assessment conditions (static/dynamic testing). The results showed that reading tasks activated the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and middle temporal gyrus. Compared with CET-4, the more difficult CET-6 task showed a broader descriptive cortical activation pattern. Notably, mediated prompts were associated with different behavioral and activation-frequency patterns across task difficulty levels: in the CET-4 task, dynamic assessment showed higher normalized activation-frequency values than static assessment in areas corresponding to the middle and inferior frontal gyrus, accompanied by rising prompt scores; however, the CET-6 task exhibited the opposite pattern. These findings suggest that mediated prompts may be more effective in stimulating learning potential when task difficulty aligns with the learner’s zone of proximal development. Overall, by considering behavioral dynamic-assessment indicators in foreign-language reading together with fNIRS-based cortical activation patterns, this exploratory study offers preliminary insights into learning potential, personalized instructional interventions, and academic cognitive assessment.