Auditory-Visual Integration, Intelligence and Reading Ability in School Children

The developmental course of auditory-visual equivalence was studied in 220 elementary school children. It was found that improvement in auditory-visual integration was most rapid in the earliest school years and reached an asymptote by the fifth grade. The correlations obtained between IQ and auditory-visual integration suggested that the two features of functioning were associated but not synonymous. In contrast, the correlations between IQ and reading ability rose with age. These opposing age trends in correlations found between reading ability and auditory-visual equivalence and between reading ability and IQ are interpreted in terms of the possible attenuating effect introduced by the low age ceiling of the auditory visual test and the possibility that in acquiring reading skill primary perceptual factors are most important for initial acquisition but more general intellectual factors for later elaboration.