Disturbances in the Perception of Auditory Sequence in Children with Minimal Cerebral Dysfunction

Three nonverbal and seven verbal recorded tests were administered to a group of 21 children with minimal cerebral dysfunction and learning difficulties, and to a comparison group of normal children. Neurologically impaired children were significantly deficient in performance on all three nonverbal tests and on backward-digit span, serial noun span, multisyllabic word repetition, scrambled sentence arrangement, and oral sequential accuracy. Perseverative behavior and bizarre responses were displayed by the experimental group as performance demands increased. Temporal ordering difficulties and reduced attention are seen to contribute to psycholinguistic problems in language learning.