Directional effects between rapid auditory processing and phonological awareness in children.
BACKGROUND
Deficient rapid auditory processing (RAP) has been associated with early language impairment and dyslexia. Using an auditory masking paradigm, children with language disabilities perform selectively worse than controls at detecting a tone in a backward masking (BM) condition (tone followed by white noise) compared to a forward masking (FM) condition (tone preceded by white noise). Tallal's (1980) auditory processing hypothesis posits that abnormal RAP leads to reduced (or impaired) phonological awareness (PA), resulting in reading and language difficulties. Alternative theories suggest that impaired PA may have more of a top-down effect on auditory processing.


METHODS
The current study examines RAP in children tested at two time points, average age 5.6 and average age 8.3, in order to test causal relations between RAP and PA in a path analysis. Additional hierarchical regressions examine how well RAP predicts reading ability when accounting for PA and vocabulary.


RESULTS
The path analysis indicates a top-down effect, such that PA has a larger impact on BM over time than the reverse. Regressions indicate no direct impact of RAP on reading ability.


CONCLUSIONS
The path analysis provides evidence against the auditory processing hypothesis and instead suggests that between the ages of 5 and 8 it is variability in early phonological representations that predicts subsequent lower-level rapid auditory processing.
Johnson
Erin Phinney
EP
University of Denver, CO, USA. erinjohnson@waterford.org
Pennington
Bruce F
BF
Lee
Nancy Raitano
NR
Boada
Richard
R
D001308:Auditory Perceptual Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D001364:Awareness; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004410:Dyslexia / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D010700:Phonetics; D010898:Pitch Perception; D011930:Reaction Time; D013223:Statistics as Topic