Phonetic coding and reading in college students with and without learning disabilities

This study examined whether adult speech production and oral reading were related independent of auditory short-term memory and vocabulary. Forty-four university students served as subjects for the study. They ranged in age from 17 to 28 years old; 26 were men and 18 were women; 11 were students with learning disabilities and 33 were students without disabilities. All subjects were tested individually on tasks requiring multisyllabic pseudoword repetition, oral reading, memory for digits, and vocabulary. In both groups--with and without learning disabilities--significant correlations were found between pseudoword repetition accuracy and reading, suggesting that poor readers also have more inaccurate speech production. The correlations remained significant after controlling for both memory and vocabulary. A scatter plot of the speech-reading relationship showed performance overlap between groups, as well as within-group heterogeneity. Significance of the findings is discussed, and issues for future research are identified.