[Assessment of the Dichotic Listening Test by Feldmann in children with developmental reading and spelling disorders]

In Germany the dD by Feldmann is a frequently used test in child assessment. Unknown, however, is the validity of the dD in the assessment of children with specific developmental language disorders. The dD by Feldmann are pairs of three-syllable content words which are presented dichotically. In this controlled cross-sectional study 65 children took the dichotic listening test by Feldmann (dD). The experimental group comprised 34 children with developmental reading and spelling disorders. The control group comprised 31 children with normal reading and spelling development. Age and nonverbal IQ were matched in both groups. The mean age was 9.8 years (range 7 - 11 years). The dichotic listening performance of right and left ear was registered separately. Twenty word pairs were presented dichotically at a constant amplitude of 65 dB. Memorisation of word pairs was tested under free recall conditions. A score of 100 % can be attained, if all word pairs are repeated correctly. Results demonstrated that no child attained a score of 100 %. As expected, the children with the developmental reading and spelling disorders attained significantly lower scores than the children in the control group (42.4 % versus 64 %). The reason for the lower results in the experimental group was left ear dichotic listening performance. There were no significant differences in right dichotic listening performance. Raw score overlaps occurred to some extent in both groups, but scores of 30 % or less were only observed in the experimental group. Scores correlated significantly with age, but not with nonverbal IQ. However, dD performance significantly correlated with several measures of phonological and syntactic language development as well as with auditory working memory. Based on these results it is our opinion that performance scores of the dD by Feldmann should be interpreted cautiously until validation studies have been carried out.