Patterns of Listening and Reading Skills in Visually Handicapped Students

Abstract

This study compared the developmental patterns of listening and reading skills of 71 visually handicapped students in the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades of four residential schools for the blind. Grade level, chronological age, intelligence, mode of reading, sex, socioeconomic status, and degree of visual impairment, were treated as predictor variables. Subjects were tested with the adapted version of the Durrell Listening-Reading Series. The results indicated that tested verbal intelligence accounted for most of the variance in listening and reading scores and had greater predictive value for listening than for reading. The other variables had little or no predictive value for either listening or reading. Furthermore, the development of listening skills was found to be stronger than reading skills at each grade level, and listening remained the superior mode across the age range.