In this study, 12 participants with various levels of motor and speech deficits were tested to explore their reading skills in relation to letter knowledge, speech level, auditory discrimination, phonological awareness, language skills, digit span, and nonverbal IQ. Two subgroups, based on a median split of reading performance, are described: the low- and high-level readers, where low-level readers perform significantly lower on reading than the other subgroup. The subgroups had a general tendency to perform low versus high on most variables tested, but not on digit span. The study stresses the importance of auditory discrimination skills and general language skills as a fundamental base for literacy. The study also generates new hypotheses that will need to be investigated further. For example, further intervention studies for phonological awareness are proposed, and a hypothesis about the effect of impaired articulation usage during reading is presented.
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