AUDITORY ATTENTIONAL SHIFTS IN READING-DISABLED STUDENTS - QUANTIFICATION OF ATTENTIONAL EFFECTIVENESS BY THE ATTENTIONAL SHIFT INDEX

A controversy has existed for some years regarding auditory attentiona l skills in reading-disabled children. Data have suggested highly deve loped attentional skills in groups of reading-disabled students, but r educed attentional shifts have also been documented in equivalent grou ps. Attentional shifts in dichotic listening with forced or directed a ttention are usually inferred from a significant interaction between a ttentional task and ear. However, this procedure cannot be used to eva luate individual test performance, and the interaction does not give a useful measure of attentional shifts in dichotic listening meaningful for comparison with other tests of attention. In this paper attention al shifts in dichotic listening are quantified with the Attentional Sh ift Index (ASI), a measure for evaluating the degree of attentional sh ift in individual subjects. The ASI is based on the log-odds ratio of hits and intrusion errors when the subject has been tested under condi tions of directed or forced attention. When 58.3% of the normative sam ple showed significant attentional shifts, none of the reading-disable d sample did so. This finding is discussed in relation to different ty pes of deficits that can account for for the lack of auditory attentio nal shifts. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.