Hearing-impaired students' performance on tests of visual processing: relationships with reading performance

Performance of hearing-impaired students on selected tests of visual processing and the relationship between performance on those measures and on a test of reading comprehension were investigated. Seventy-seven subjects, all 7- and 8-year-olds, were tested using the MVPT, ITPA Sequential Memory Subtest, VADS, Jordan, VMI, Slingerland, and SAT-HI. Scores of the hearing-impaired subjects failed to match those of the hearing norm sample of the VADS test but no systematic differences were found on the other tests of visual processing. Performance IQ was strongly associated with both visual processing and reading scores. Significant portions of the variance in reading scores were explained by IQ and performance on tests of memory for visual stimuli. Visual tests without a memory component failed to explain significant portions of the variance in reading performance.