Relationship of Auditory and Visual Skills to Reading Retardation

Abstract

The relationship between specific tests of auditory and visual skills and phonic decoding, sight-word reading, and comprehension was investigated in a sample of 77 poor readers from a racially and ethnically heterogeneous elementary school population in New York City. Partial correlational analyses (with age and IQ as control variables) indicated that only two of the skill measures (Auditory Closure and Sound Blending) related to a wide variety of reading measures independently of IQ. Results also showed that IQ scores did not correlate highly with the reading measures. It is concluded that the findings do not support the hypothesis that children can be successfully sorted into auditory and visual learner categories on the basis of the instruments employed (aptitude-treatment interaction). Furthermore, the results suggest that the use of IQ scores to compute expected reading levels for children is questionable.

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