Basic Auditory Processing Skills and Phonological Awareness in Low-IQ Readers and Typically Developing Controls (original) (raw)

2011, Scientific Studies of Reading

https://doi.org/10.1080/10888431003706291

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Abstract

We explore the relationships between basic auditory processing, phonological awareness, vocabulary and word reading in a sample of 95 children, 55 typically-developing children and 40 children with low-IQ All children received non-speech auditory processing tasks, phonological processing and literacy measures, and a receptive vocabulary task.

Key takeaways

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  1. Low-IQ poor readers exhibit significant auditory processing deficits, impacting phonological skills and reading abilities.
  2. The study involved 95 children, including 40 low-IQ poor readers and 55 typical controls.
  3. Auditory processing measures predicted unique variance in reading skills, independent of IQ.
  4. Neighborhood density effects were consistent across all groups, suggesting similar phonological development mechanisms.
  5. Impaired rise time perception is crucial for phonological development and literacy acquisition in low-IQ poor readers.

Phonological Processing and Word Reading in Typically Developing and Reading Disabled Children: Severity Matters

Scientific Studies of Reading, 2014

In this study word reading (WR) fluency was used to dichotomously classify 1,598 Dutch children at different cutoffs, indicating (very) poor or (very) good reading performance. Analysis of variance and receiver operating characteristics were used to investigate the effects of rapid automatized naming (RAN) and phonemic awareness (PA) in predicting group membership. The highest predictive values were found for the combination of RAN and PA, particularly for the poorest readers. Furthermore, results indicate that with the severity of impairment, WR is more dominated by deficient PA, which is interpreted as an enduring problem with sublexical processing. Another main result is that with the increase of reading skill, the contribution of PA diminishes, whereas the contribution of RAN remains fairly constant for the whole reading fluency continuum. These results warrant the conclusion that whereas PA hallmarks reading disability, RAN appears to be the default predictor for above-average or excellent reading proficiency.

A Model of Phonological Processing, Language, and Reading for Students With Mild Intellectual Disability

American Journal on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, 2013

Little is known about the relationships between phonological processing, language, and reading in children with intellectual disability (ID). We examined the structure of phonological processing in 294 school-age children with mild ID and the relationships between its components and expressive and receptive language and reading skills using structural equation modeling. Phonological processing consisted of two distinct but correlated latent abilities: phonological awareness and naming speed. Phonological awareness had strong relationships with expressive and receptive language and reading skills. Naming speed had moderate relationships with these variables. Results suggest that children with ID bring the same skills to the task of learning to read as children with typical development, highlighting the fact that phonologically based reading instruction should be considered a viable approach.

Phonological processing and reading in children with speech sound disorders

American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 2007

Purpose: To examine the relationship between phonological processing skills prior to kindergarten entry and reading skills at the end of 1st grade, in children with speech sound disorders (SSD). Method: The participants were 17 children with SSD and poor phonological processing skills (SSD-low PP), 16 children with SSD and good phonological processing skills (SSD-high PP), and 35 children with typical speech who were first assessed during their prekindergarten year using measures of phonological processing (i.e., speech perception, rime awareness, and onset awareness tests), speech production, receptive and expressive language, and phonological awareness skills. This assessment was repeated when the children were completing 1st grade. The Test of Word Reading Efficiency was also conducted at that time. First-grade sight word and nonword reading performance was compared across these groups. Results: At the end of 1st grade, the SSD-low PP group achieved significantly lower nonword decoding scores than the SSD-high PP and typical speech groups. The 2 SSD groups demonstrated similarly good receptive language skills and similarly poor articulation skills at that time, however. No between-group differences in sight word reading were observed. All but 1 child (in the SSD-low PP group) obtained reading scores that were within normal limits. Conclusion: Weaknesses in phonological processing were stable for the SSD-low PP subgroup over a 2-year period.

Development of young readers' phonological processing abilities

Journal of Educational Psychology, 1993

In a cross-sectional study of 184 kindergarten and 2nd grade students, confirmatory factor analysis of a battery of phonological and control tasks were used to compare alternative models of young readers' phonological processing abilities. We found evidence for 5 distinct but correlated phonological processing abilities. Latent phonological processing abilities were more highly correlated with general cognitive ability than previous reports would suggest, although they accounted for variance in word recognition independent of general cognitive ability. The results of this study, coupled with those of a previous study of prereaders, suggest that phonological abilities are best conceptualized as relatively stable and coherent individual difference attributes, as opposed to relatively unstable measures of reading-related knowledge. Phonological processing refers to the use of phonological information, especially the sound structure of one's oral language, in processing written and oral information (Jorm & Share, 1983; Wagner & Torgesen, 1987). When nonreading preschool children are given phonological processing tasks, such as the task of blending together speech segments that have been presented in isolation, their performance is remarkably predictive of how well they will read several years later (

Auditory Processing and Early Literacy Skills in a Preschool and Kindergarten Population

Journal of Learning Disabilities, 2010

Although the relationship between auditory processing and reading-related skills has been investigated in school-age populations and in prospective studies of infants, understanding of the relationship between these variables in the period immediately preceding formal reading instruction is sparse. In this cross-sectional study, auditory processing, phonological awareness, early literacy skills, and general ability were assessed in a mixed sample of 88 three- to six-year-old children both cross-sectionally and longitudinally. Results from both cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses suggest the importance of early auditory rise time sensitivity in developing phonological awareness skills, especially in the development of rhyme awareness.

Disabled Readers' Performance on Tasks of Phonological Processing, Rapid Naming, and Letter Knowledge Before and After Kindergarten

Learning Disabilities Research and Practice, 2008

The importance of early identification of children at risk for reading failure is clearly established in the literature. The purpose of this longitudinal retrospective study was to further define the relationship between the development of prereading skills and later reading outcome in two groups of children; a group of reading-disabled children and a group of their normally reading peers. Children's alphabetic knowledge, phonological awareness, and rapid naming skills were explored at the beginning of kindergarten and again prior to first grade as a function of later reading outcomes. Results indicate that differences found between the groups in all measures at prekindergarten age diminish by prefirst grade with the exception of phonological awareness abilities. Findings have direct implications for screening children at risk for reading difficulties and the time-sensitive nature of these tasks during the preliteracy period.

Enhancing the phonological processing skills of children with specific reading disability

International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 1997

The present study evaluated the benefits of phonological processing skills training for children with persistent reading difficulties. Children aged between 9-14 years, identified as having a specific reading disability, participated in the study. In a series of three experiments, pedagogical issues related to length of training time, model of intervention and severity of readers' phonological processing skills deficit prior to intervention, were explored. The results indicated that improvement in poor readers' phonological processing skills led to a dramatic improvement in their reading accuracy and reading comprehension performance. Increasing the length of training time significantly improved transfer effects to the reading process. Children with particularly severe phonological processing skill deficits benefited from an extended training period, and both individual and group intervention models for phonological processing training proved successful. Implications for speech and language therapists are discussed.

How does phonological awareness relate to nonword reading skill amongst poor readers?

Reading and Writing, 1999

This study examined phonological awareness at the level of phonemes and rhyme and related this to nonword naming ability. Poor readers were compared with 11 year old chronological-age controls and 8 year old reading-age controls. The poor reader group was impaired for chronological age in all tasks, and impaired for reading age at nonword naming and phoneme deletion. The poor

Auditory perceptual processing in people with reading and oral language impairments: current issues and recommendations

Dyslexia, 2001

A popular hypothesis holds that specific reading disability (SRD) and specific language impairment (SLI) result from an impaired ability to process rapid and brief sounds. However, the results of experiments that have tested this hypothesis are incongruous. A number of factors could explain these contradictory findings, including the questionable reliability and validity of rapid auditory processing tasks, individual differences in the auditory processing abilities of SRD and SLI populations, the age of listeners, the quality of control groups, and the relationship between verbal and non-verbal auditory processing abilities. These issues highlight the need for future studies to (1) establish the reliability and validity of psychophysical tasks used to assess rapid auditory processing; (2) report the rapid auditory processing scores of individuals rather than just group means; (3) include a wide range of reading and spoken language tests to determine the literacy and oral language profile of people who demonstrate an auditory processing deficit; (4) include clinical comparison groups to determine whether a rapid auditory processing deficit is related specifically to written and spoken language impairments; and (5) examine the relationship between low-level non-verbal, verbal, and phonological processing abilities.

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Auditory Sensory Processing and Phonological Development in High IQ and Exceptional Readers, Typically Developing Readers, and Children With Dyslexia: A Longitudinal Study

Child Development

Phonological difficulties characterize children with developmental dyslexia across languages, but whether impaired auditory processing underlies these phonological difficulties is debated. Here the causal question is addressed by exploring whether individual differences in sensory processing predict the development of phonological awareness in 86 English-speaking lower-and middle-class children aged 8 years in 2005 who had dyslexia, or were age-matched typically developing children, some with exceptional reading/high IQ. The predictive relations between auditory processing and phonological development are robust for this sample even when phonological awareness at Time 1 (the autoregressor) is controlled. High reading/IQ does not much impact these relations. The data suggest that basic sensory abilities are significant longitudinal predictors of growth in phonological awareness in children. We thank Nichola Daily and Lisa Barnes for their assistance with data entry, and the children, families, and schools participating in this research for their help and support. This research was funded by the Medical Research Council, Ref. G0400574. The sponsor played no role in the study design nor in the collection, analysis, interpretation, and writing up of the data. The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. All participants and their guardians gave informed consent in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, and the study was approved by the Psychology Research Ethics Committee of the

The relationship between phonological processing skills and word and nonword identification performance in children with mild intellectual disabilities

Research in Developmental Disabilities, 2010

Limited research exists concerning the literacy skills of children with intellectual disabilities. Recent research conducted with this population suggests that phonological awareness is related to reading performance by these individuals and that they can benefit from phonemic literacy instruction. The limited corpus of research documenting the literacy skills of children with intellectual disabilities mainly has been conducted with very small samples of children with Down syndrome. Data reported here are part of a larger ongoing project with children who have mild intellectual disabilities resulting from various etiological factors that examines the impact of two reading programs on both early developing reading skills (e.g., phonological awareness, word decoding) and the development of fluency and comprehension skills. 1.1. The relationship between phonological awareness and reading performance by children with intellectual disabilities Children with a range of intellectual disabilities have been taught to read primarily through sight words since it has been assumed that individuals with intellectual difficulties cannot benefit from phonemic instruction because of their limited cognitive skills and associated language difficulties (e.g., Browder & Xin, 1998). Evidence for this assumption comes from an early study by Cossu, Rossini, and Marshall (1993). They reported that 10 children with Down syndrome, whose mean age

Changing relations between phonological processing abilities and word-level reading as children develop from beginning to skilled readers: A 5-year longitudinal study

Developmental Psychology, 1997

Relations between phonological processing abilities and word-level reading skills were examined in a longitudinal correlational study of 216 children. Phonological processing abilities, word-level reading skills, and vocabulary were assessed annually from kindergarten through 4th grade, as the children developed from beginning to skilled readers. Individual differences in phonological awareness were related to subsequent individual differences in word-level reading for every time period examined. Individual differences in serial naming and vocabulary were related to subsequent individual differences in word-level reading initially, but these relations faded with development. Individual differences in letter-name knowledge were related to subsequent individual differences in phonological awareness and serial naming, but there were no relations between individual differences in wordlevel reading and any subsequent phonological processing ability.

Phonological Processing, Language, and Literacy: A Comparison of Children with Mild-to-moderate Sensorineural Hearing Loss and Those with Specific Language Impairment

Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 2001

Phonological skills, language ability, and literacy scores were compared for four groups : 19 children with mild-to-moderate sensorineural hearing loss (SNH), 20 children with specific language impairment (SLI), 20 controls matched on chronological age to the SNH group (CA), and 15 controls matched on receptive vocabulary level to a subset of the SLI group (CB). In common with the SLI group, mean scores of children with mild-to-moderate hearing loss were significantly poorer on tests of phonological short-term memory, phonological discrimination, and phonological awareness than CA controls. No differences between group means were observed in SNH and CA control groups on vocabulary, digit and sentence recall, sentence comprehension, and literacy scores. However, there was considerable individual variation within the SNH group. Nearly 50 % of the SNH group showed phonological impairment associated with poorer expressive and receptive vocabulary and higher hearing thresholds than remaining children without phonological impairment. Nonword repetition deficits were observed in SNH subgroups with and without phonological impairment and were of a similar magnitude to those observed in children with SLI. Indeed, poorer repetition in children with SLI could only be differentiated from children with SNH on phonologically complex nonwords. Overall, findings suggested major problems in nonword repetition and phonological impairment occurred without clinically significant deficits in wider language and literacy abilities in children with mild-to-moderate sensorineural hearing loss. Implications for theories of SLI are discussed.

Speech Perception Deficits in Poor Readers: Auditory Processing or Phonological Coding?

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 1997

Poor readers are inferior to normal-reading peers in aspects of speech perception. Two hypotheses have been proposed to account for their deficits: (i) a speech-specific failure in phonological representation, or (ii) a general deficit in auditory "temporal processing", such that they cannot easily perceive the rapid spectral changes of formant transitions at the onset of stop-vowel syllables. To test these hypotheses, two groups of second-grade children (20 "good readers", 20 "poor readers"), matched for age and intelligence, were selected to differ significantly on a fba!-/da! temporal order judgment (TOJ) task, said to be diagnostic of a temporal processing deficit. Three experiments then showed that the groups did not differ in: (i) TOJ when fba! and Ida! were paired with more easily discriminated syllables (fba!-/sa!, Ida!-Ifa/); (ii) discriminating non-speech sine wave analogs ofthe second and third formants of fba! and Ida!; (iii) sensitivity to brief transitional cues varying along a synthetic speech continuum. Thus, poor readers' difficulties with /ha!-/da! reflected perceptual confusion between phonetically similar, though phonologically contrastive, syllables rather than difficulty in perceiving rapid spectral changes. The results are consistent with a speechspecific, not a general auditory deficit. Reading is a complex skill and there are many reasons why children may fail. The most firmly established correlate of reading disability is a deficiellcy in skills related to phollological processing. Phollological processing entails the segmental analysis of words for ordinary speaking and listelling, as well as the metaphonological skills required for explicitly analyzing the soulld structure of speech into the phonemic components represented by the alphabet. Many studies have shown poor readers to be significantly illferior to their normal reading peers in "...perceptual discrimination of phonemes, phollological awareness tasks involving the manipulation of phones within words, speed and accuracy in lexical access for picture names, verbal short-term memory, sYIltactic awareness and semantic processing on tasks of listening comprehension" (Olson, 1992, p.896). Many, if not all, of these weaknesses may arise, directly or indirectly, from a deficit in speech perception. Several indepelldent lines of research point to speech perception as a source of subtle, but ramifying deficit in reading-impaired children and adults. The nature and origin of the perceptual deficit have been a matter of debate for over fifteen years. One account sees it as purelylinguistic, specific to speech and closely related to the deficit in verbal working memory, also often observed in poor readers (e.g.,

Preschool Impairments In Auditory Processing and Speech Perception Uniquely Predict Future Reading Problems

Research in …, 2011

Developmental dyslexia is characterized by severe reading and spelling difficulties that are persistent and resistant to the usual didactic measures and remedial efforts. It is well established that a major cause of these problems lies in poorly specified phonological representations. Many individuals with dyslexia also present impairments in auditory temporal processing and speech perception, but it remains debated whether these more basic perceptual impairments play a role in causing the reading problem. Longitudinal studies may help clarifying this issue by assessing preschool children before they receive reading instruction and by following them up through literacy development. The current longitudinal study shows impairments in auditory frequency modulation (FM) detection, speech perception and phonological awareness in kindergarten and in grade 1 in children who receive a dyslexia diagnosis in grade 3. FM sensitivity and speech-in-noise perception in kindergarten uniquely contribute to growth in reading ability, even after controlling for letter knowledge and phonological awareness. These findings indicate that impairments in auditory processing and speech perception are not merely an epiphenomenon of reading failure. Although no specific directional relations were observed between auditory processing, speech perception and phonological awareness, the highly significant concurrent and predictive correlations between all these variables suggest a reciprocal association and corroborate the evidence for the auditory deficit theory of dyslexia.

Exploring Hypotheses About Phonological Awareness, Memory, and Reading Achievement

Journal of learning disabilities, 2002

Reading-related skills were tested in normally-reading, reading-disabled, and deaf adults, who did not differ on average Performance IQ. The latter two groups demonstrated similar levels of phonological awareness - both much lower than controls - but only the disabled readers also exhibited deficits in other skills, including verbal short-term memory, morphological awareness, speeded written naming, and reading comprehension. The average reading level of these deaf readers was significantly higher than that of the disabled readers. Three controls also demonstrated limited phonological awareness and no other deficits in a pilot study, performing similarly to the deaf readers. The results support other studies suggesting that it may be processes dependent on memory, and not solely the degree to which phonological awareness is possessed, which determine reading achievement.

Phonological processing skills in speech and language impaired children

International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 1997

Phonological processing has been shown by many researchers to be strongly related to the acquisition of reading and spelling skills. Children with speech and language impairment appear to be at increased risk for phonological processing problems and hence literary difficulties. However, not all children with speech and language impairment experience difficulties: the literature is not clear as to which groups of speech and language impaired children are most severely affected nor which aspects of phonological processing are most likely to be impaired. Rigorous subject selection was employed to compare the performance of four groups of 20 children, aged approximately 6 years: speech-impaired (Speech); language-impaired (Language); speech and language impaired (Mixed); and children with normally developing language (Normal), by use of a battery of phonological processing tasks. The results supported the research that has shown speech and language impaired children to have weaker phonological processing skills than the general population. All the subjects in this sample appeared to be at risk: the Mixed children demonstrated the most difficulty, followed by the Language group, with the Normal group performing the best. Whilst the Speech group as a whole performed significantly more poorly than the Normal group, it consisted of two levels of performance which, on post hoc analysis were shown to relate to the pattern of speech impairment exhibited by the child.

The Contribution of Phonological Awareness to Reading Fluency and Its Individual Sub-skills in Readers Aged 9- to 12-years

Frontiers in Psychology

Research examining phonological awareness (PA) contributions to reading in established readers of different skill levels is limited. The current study examined the contribution of PA to phonological decoding, visual word recognition, reading rate, and reading comprehension in 124 fourth to sixth grade children (aged 9-12 years). On the basis of scores on the FastaReada measure of reading fluency participants were allocated to one of three reading ability categories: dysfluent (n = 47), moderate (n = 38) and fluent (n = 39). For the dysfluent group, PA contributed significantly to all reading measures except rate, but in the moderate group only to phonological decoding. PA did not influence performances on any of the reading measures examined for the fluent reader group. The results support the notion that fluency is characterized by a shift from conscious decoding to rapid and accurate visual recognition of words. Although PA may be influential in reading development, the results of the current study show that it is not sufficient for fluent reading.

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Auditory Temporal Processing Skills in Musicians with Dyslexia

Dyslexia, 2014

The core cognitive difficulty in developmental dyslexia involves phonological processing, but adults and children with dyslexia also have sensory impairments. Impairments in basic auditory processing show particular links with phonological impairments, and recent studies with dyslexic children across languages reveal a relationship between auditory temporal processing and sensitivity to rhythmic timing and speech rhythm. As rhythm is explicit in music, musical training might have a beneficial effect on the auditory perception of acoustic cues to rhythm in dyslexia. Here we took advantage of the presence of musicians with and without dyslexia in musical conservatoires, comparing their auditory temporal processing abilities with those of dyslexic non-musicians matched for cognitive ability. Musicians with dyslexia showed equivalent auditory sensitivity to musicians without dyslexia and also showed equivalent rhythm perception. The data support the view that extensive rhythmic experience initiated during childhood (here in the form of music training) can affect basic auditory processing skills which are found to be deficient in individuals with dyslexia.

A longitudinal study of basic auditory processing and phonological skills in children with low IQ

Applied Psycholinguistics, 2013

ABSTRACTHere we report a longitudinal follow-up of 103 children with low or typical IQ and good or poor word reading, first studied by Kuppen, Huss, Fosker, Mead, and Goswami (2011). Our current goal was to explore whether different basic auditory processing measures taken 14 months previously would predict development in word reading and phonology in this sample. We also assessed the stability over time for the associations among basic auditory processing, phonology, and reading reported by Kuppen et al. (2011) for low IQ readers. The auditory processing measures showed significant longitudinal relations with both reading and phonology, and associations between the measures were largely stable over time. The data suggest that basic auditory processing skills and phonological skills, rather than IQ, determine a child's progress in word reading, throwing light on the fundamental biological mechanisms that determine reading development. Children with low IQ and poor reading should...

Assessing the Effectiveness of Two Theoretically Motivated Computer-Assisted Reading Interventions in the United Kingdom: GG Rime and GG Phoneme

Reading Research Quarterly

We report an empirical comparison of the effectiveness of two theoretically-motivated computer assisted reading interventions (CARI) based on the Finnish GraphoGame CARI: English GraphoGame Rime (GG Rime) and English GraphoGame Phoneme (GG Phoneme). Participants were 6-7 year old children who had been identified by their teachers as being relatively poor at reading. The children were divided into three groups. Two of the groups played one of the games as a supplement to normal classroom literacy instruction for five sessions per week for a period of 12 weeks. The third group formed an untreated control. Both games led to gains in reading, spelling and phonological skills in comparison to the untreated control group. The two interventions also had some differential effects. The intervention gains were maintained at a 4-month follow-up.

The Warnke Method for the Diagnosis and Improvement of Phonological Competence in Special Needs Children

Education Sciences, 2020

Speech, reading, and writing are the basic forms of linguistic communication. Therefore, it is very important to diagnose any problems with them as early and completely as possible, particularly in children with special needs. One of the methods that focuses primarily on the diagnosis and therapy of such learning difficulties is the one developed by Fred Warnke. The diagnostic solutions of the method were motivated by the following assumptions: (a) Automation of hearing, vision, and motor functions can be improved based on the level of brain activity; (b) the development and automation of phonological analysis and synthesis are based on cooperation between the two brain hemispheres. The main purpose of this paper is to present and discuss some research results that show the usefulness of diagnosis of the first stage of the Warnke method, as well as the training determined by it, in improving the phonological memory, language, and reading and writing skills of a group of four Polish ...