Acquisition of Visual-Auditory Associations by Good and Excellent Readers

Abstract

The acquisition of visual-auditory associations was studied in 96 7-yr.-old Ss who had successfully completed 1 yr. of reading instruction. The effects of reading status, stimulus order, and type of associative task were assessed. Children classified as Excellent Readers made significantly fewer errors in learning the associative tasks than did children classified as Good Readers. Visual-preceding-auditory stimulus presentation was consistently easier than auditory-preceding-visual presentation for Good Readers; whereas this order effect was limited to tasks involving verbal visual stimuli for Excellent Readers. For both reading groups associations involving verbal visual stimuli were more difficult than those involving nonverbal visual stimuli. There were no significant differences between associative tasks involving verbal and nonverbal sounds, and no significant interaction of stimulus modalities with the verbal-nonverbal characteristics of the stimuli. The results were compared with those obtained in a previous study with adult Ss.