The Role of Verbal Labeling in Equivalence Tasks as Related to Reading Ability

Abstract

Recent interest in the relation between sensory integration and reading ability has resulted in the necessity of explaining the differences between the performance of good and poor readers on equivalence tasks. The present study was undertaken to examine the possiblity that poor readers have difficulty verbally encoding sensory information. Twenty-four 11- and 12-year-old boys were required to verbally label temporally-ordered patterns of lights, sounds, and finger taps. These data were then related to a previous finding that good readers perform an auditory intrasensory equivalence task more accurately than a visual or a tactual task, whereas poor readers do not demonstrate a modality superiority. The failure to find modality-specific labeling differences between good and poor readers in this study suggests that performance differences are due to factors other than verbal labeling. Similarities between the demands of the reading task and the equivalence task are discussed in relation to the question of the source of the difficulty encountered by the reading disabled child.