Auditory temporal processing performance of young adults with reading disorders

The present study investigated the temporal processing abilities of college students with diagnosed reading disorders. A behavioral test battery was used that involved discrimination of the pattern of presentation of tone triads in which individual components differed in either frequency or duration. An additional test involving measurement of frequency difference limens for long- and short-duration tones was also administered. The college students with reading disorders exhibited significantly higher error rates in discriminating duration patterns than the normal reading group. No group differences were found for the frequency pattern discrimination task. Both groups exhibited larger frequency difference limens with the shorter 20- and 50-ms tones than with the 200-ms tones. Significant correlations were found between reading ability measures and temporal processing abilities, specifically in word recognition and duration pattern processing, suggesting a relationship between lower level auditory temporal processing skills and decoding efficiency.