Development of Reading-While-Listening Skills in the Primary Grades

Abstract

FIRSTAND THIRD-GRADE children's ability to coordinate reading and listening was examined using a mismatch detection task. Children read a printed text while listening to a recording of the same text, in which an extraneous spoken word was occasionally substituted for one appearing on the page. Subjects signaled to the experimenter each time they detected a mismatch between what they were reading and what they heard. Detection of mismatches indicates ability to extract information from the two sources in temporal coordination-a skill basic to reading-while-listening. Even first-grade children performed the task well at their own oral reading rates. At rates typical of read-along materials found in schools, both firstand third-grade children found it difficult to combine readingwith listening. A developmental trend toward selective attending in reading-while-listening was observed. Two theoretical approaches to the question of how children combine reading and listening were discussed.