Serial-ordering deficits in inferior readers

Abstract

To test the hypothesis that reading disorders in children may in part grow out of a more general deficit in serial organization, the performance of average, inferior and pre-readers was compared on two tasks that required them to remember the correct serial position of visual or auditory stimuli. The efficiency with which all groups were able to do this increased markedly as a function of age. In conditions where greater demands were made upon immediate memory processes, the average readers surpassed the inferior readers at all ages studied. Crossed dominance of hand and eye was equally common within these two groups.