The association of rapid temporal perception with orthographic and phonological processing in reading impaired children and adults
AUTHORS
ABSTRACT
dults and children with reading impairment (N = 67) were administered a rapid auditory task, a rapid visual task, and a battery of orthographic and phonological tasks. Our results support a differential development model of reading disability that argues that deficits in rapid auditory ability in children are primarily associated with problems in phonological processing, whereas deficits in rapid visual ability in children are primarily associated with problems in orthographic processing (Farmer & Klein, 1995). In contrast to the children, the adults showed a strong relation between rapid auditory ability and both orthographic and phonological processing. These results suggest that continued deficits in auditory ability may have a pervasive and negative impact on word processing in general. In addition, adults did not exhibit a relation between rapid visual ability and orthographic-processing problems. Orthographic-processing deficits may result from a reading delay condition that can be overcome with increased reading exposure (Harm & Seidenberg, 1999).