Dynamic sensory sensitivity and children's word decoding skills

The relationship between sensory sensitivity and reading performance was ex amined to test the hypothesis that the orthographic and phonological skills engaged in visual word recognition are constrained by the ability to detec t dynamic visual and auditory events. A test battery using sensory psychoph ysics, psychometric tests, and measures of component literacy skills was ad ministered to 32 unselected 10-year-old primary school children. The result s suggest that children's sensitivity to both dynamic auditory and visual s timuli are related to their literacy skills. Importantly, after controlling for intelligence and overall reading ability, visual motion sensitivity ex plained independent variance in orthographic skill but not phonological abi lity, and auditory FM sensitivity covaried with phonological skill but not orthographic skill. These results support the hypothesis that sensitivity a t detecting dynamic stimuli influences normal children's reading skills. Vi sion and audition separately may affect the ability to extract orthographic and phonological information during reading.