Listening comprehension and recall abilities in adolescents with language-learning disabilities and without...

Listening comprehension and recall abilities for social studies lectures were examined and compared in 20 adolescent males with language-learning disabilities (LLD) and 29 without disabilities (WD). Subjects viewed two social studies lectures with comparison and causation expository discourse structures and verbally responded to literal and inferential comprehension questions. Regardless of lecture type or question type, the group with LLD performed significantly more poorly than did the group WD. Both groups responded accurately to significantly more inferential questions for the causation lecture over the comparison lecture. Neither group demonstrated a significant difference with respect to their response accuracy for the literal questions across lecture types.