Processing of rapid auditory stimuli in school-age children referred for evaluation of learning disorders

Tallal hypothesized that reading disabled children have a domain-general de ficit in processing rapidly occurring auditory stimuli that degrades speech perception, thereby limiting phonologic awareness and thus reading acquisi tion. She predicted they would be disproportionately affected by rapidly pr esented auditory stimuli. In this study, one hundred 7- to 11-year-old chil dren with learning impairment (LI) and 243 non-learning impaired (NLI) chil dren were evaluated on a two-tone auditory discrimination paradigm. LI comm itted more errors, but effects of timing were comparable. The same result w as obtained for a subsample of good and poor readers. Task performance pred icted reading, spelling, and calculation. Neural processes underlying perce ption of speech and other auditory stimuli be less effective in poor reader s; however, contrary to Tallal's hypothesis, rate may not be specifically a ffected.