Auditory Retention of Nonverbal and Verbal Sequential Stimuli in Children with Reading Disabilities

Abstract

This study was designed to explore the ability of children to retain serially presented auditory stimuli. A series of experimental measures were used requiring auditory retention of nonverbal stimuli consisting of rhythmic and durational patterns, and verbal stimuli consisting of phonemes, words, sentences, and rearranged syntactic structures. The performance of children with reading disabilities was compared to a matched group of children without reading disabilities. Clinical observations were substantially supported that children with reading disabilities could be expected to perform significantly poorer on tests requiring auditory retention on nonverbal and verbal sequential stimuli. In addition, the performance of the subjects with reading disabilities supported the notion that a reduced ability to retain auditory stimuli is related to reading disability.

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