Cognitive Processes in Auditory Discrimination in Normal and Retarded Readers

In a study of auditory discrimination in Israeli Ss, poor readers performed less well than normal readers in identifying pairs of words as same or different. This result, which is comparable to that obtained with American children, indicated that differences in language structure could not account for these findings. In a second study, the judgment of same-different was eliminated by having Ss imitate the pairs of words. Poor readers again performed less well, primarily due to perseverating on one word of the pair. In a third study, the same words were presented for imitation individually rather than in pairs. Under this condition, retarded readers had as high a level of accuracy as did the normal readers, suggesting that their poor performance in the first two studies was caused by the complex demands involved in a seemingly simple perceptual task.