Memory and Attention Factors in Specific Learning Disabilities

Abstract

In previous research, children with inadequate reading skills were found to be particularly deficient in recalling three visual items followed by three auditory items (modality recall) when the items were presented rapidly as three audiovisual pairs of simultaneous, discrepant items. When required to recall the three itempairs in their actual order of arrival, however, the disabled readers were as successful as the normal controls. In the present experiment, we assessed (a) whether these effects could be replicated in another learning disabled sample possessing very different sociocultural features, and (b) whether the modality recall deficiency, if replicated, could be explained by sensory masking resulting from the simultaneous display of the auditory and visual signals. The results of previous work were highly replicable: learning disabled children could generally recall the items in their actual order of arrival as well as the normal control group but, as before, were highly deficient in recalling the items in two modality sets. The modality recall deficiency was not attenuated when the items were staggered, thus eliminating the simultaneous audiovisual presentation and the possibility of sensory masking. Higher-order cognitive processes were implicated as bases for the deficient modality recall performance. Auditory distraction, auditory dominance, deficient visual information processing, and deficient information-organization processes were cited as possible sources of the deficient modality recall and, by implication, as bases for the reading disability.