1 St John's College, University of Oxford.
2 Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford.
Psychol Sci. 2018 Aug;29(8):1270-1282. doi: 10.1177/0956797618763090. Epub 2018 May 23.
This study evaluated the claim that auditory processing deficits are a cause of reading and language difficulties. We report a longitudinal study of 245 children at family risk of dyslexia, children with preschool language impairments, and control children. Children with language impairments had poorer frequency-discrimination thresholds than controls at 5.5 years, but children at family risk of dyslexia did not. A model assessing longitudinal relationships among frequency discrimination, reading, language, and executive function skills showed that frequency discrimination was predicted by executive skills but was not a longitudinal predictor of reading or language skills. Our findings contradict the hypothesis that frequency discrimination is causally related to dyslexia or language impairment and suggest that individuals at risk for dyslexia or who have language impairments may perform poorly on auditory processing tasks because of comorbid attentional difficulties.
本研究评估了听觉处理缺陷是阅读和语言困难的原因这一说法。我们报告了一项针对 245 名有阅读障碍家族风险、有学前语言障碍和对照组儿童的纵向研究。有语言障碍的儿童在 5.5 岁时的频率辨别阈值比对照组差，但有阅读障碍家族风险的儿童则没有。一个评估频率辨别、阅读、语言和执行功能技能之间纵向关系的模型表明，频率辨别受执行技能预测，但不是阅读或语言技能的纵向预测因素。我们的研究结果与频率辨别与阅读障碍或语言障碍有因果关系的假设相矛盾，这表明有阅读障碍或语言障碍风险的个体或有语言障碍的个体可能由于注意力困难而在听觉处理任务上表现不佳。
