Auditory processing in developmental dyslexia: an exploratory study of an auditory and visual matching training...

This study examined whether training using a nonverbal auditory-visual matching task had a remedial effect on reading skills in developmental dyslexia. The pretest/post-test design was used with Swedish children (N= 41), between the ages of 7 and 12. Training comprised twice-weekly sessions of 15 minutes, over eight weeks. There was an improvement in auditory-visual matching during the training period. There were also improvements in some reading test scores, especially in reading nonsense words and in reading speed. These improvements in tasks which are thought to rely on phonological processing suggest that such reading difficulties in dyslexia may stem in part from more basic perceptual difficulties, including those required to manage the visual and auditory components of the decoding task. The utility of the concept of auditory structuring is discussed in relation to auditory and phonological processing skills when a child learns to read.