EFFECT OF EXTENDING THE RESPONSE WINDOWAND OF SUBJECT PRACTICE ON MEASURES OFAUDITORY PROCESSING IN CHILDREN WITHLEARNING OR READING DISABILITY

Abstract

Background This study studied the effect of extending the response window on the auditory processing (AP) test performance of children with a learning disability or reading disability (LD/RD). The study also investigated whether subject practice affected test performance. Material and Methods Twenty-four children with an LD and 12 typically developing (TD) age-matched peers between 9 and 13 years of age participated in the study. The participants were administered three AP tests – the dichotic digit (DD), duration pattern sequence (DPS), and random gap detection (RGD) test – under two conditions: standard response window and extended response window. Results The performance of the LD group on the DD and DPS tests significantly improved using an extended time window whereas the performance of the TD group did not change. Conclusions The findings suggest that some children with an LD achieve higher scores on auditory processing tasks if given a longer response window. This has implications for diagnosis and for providing a potential differential diagnosis tool.