An Experimental Investigation Into the Relative Merits of Listening and Reading Comprehension for Boys and Girls of Primary School Age

S ummary . The scores of primary school children on comprehension tests presented orally and visually were compared. Five different types of material were used. The correlations of the auditory and visual tests with each other and with an Intelligence test were of the order 0·8. Differences in the mean scores of boys and girls, between boys and girls on the two methods of presentation, and between boys and girls at five levels of intelligence were examined. There were variations between boys' and girls' results, and between oral and visual presentation; there was a marked tendency for boys to do better than girls on some of the oral tests with practical and scientific content. Passages chosen for similarity of content were not necessarily equivalent to the children. One thing clearly emerges from this research: a single mark for one comprehension test is not a valid or reliable mark for an assessment of comprehension in general; a number of short passages with variety in content might be a more useful guide.