Abstract
Purpose: Reading disability (RD) is frequently associated with deficits in auditory processing (i.e., processing speech and non-linguistic sounds). Several hypotheses exist regarding the link between RD and auditory processing, but none fully account for the range/variety of auditory impairments reported in the literature. These impairments have been primarily summarized by qualitative reviews and meta-analytic evidence for most auditory processing impairments is lacking. Method: We conducted a PRISMA-compliant meta-analysis quantifying the degree to which individuals with RD are impaired on four categories of auditory processing abilities: frequency discrimination, intensity discrimination, duration discrimination, and gap detection. This methodology was accepted and executed as a Registered Report. Results: Auditory processing impairments of medium to large effect size were present in RD vs. typical groups for all categories: frequency (g = 0.79), duration (g = 0.80), and intensity discrimination (g = 0.60), as well as gap detection (g = 0.80). No differences were found across task designs (i.e., testing methods). Conclusion: This meta-analysis documents a large, multiple-domain non-linguistic, auditory processing impairment in RD. Contrary to previous studies, we found a significant deficit in intensity discrimination. The impairments described here must be accounted for by future causal hypotheses in RD and suggest that auditory processing impairments are broader than previously thought.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 167-189 |
| Number of pages | 23 |
| Journal | Scientific Studies of Reading |
| Volume | 28 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2024 |
Funding
This work was funded by Northwestern University including the Graduate Research Grant and Office of Undergraduate Research. Research reported in this publication was supported, in part, by the National Institutes of Health's National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, Grant Number UL1TR001422. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. We thank Rick Qian, Gabriella Leibowitz, and Tessneem Shahbandar for their assistance with data collection and extraction. We also thank the many authors who sent us their data to be included in this meta-analysis. We thank Beth Tipton for essential statistical guidance. We thank Sumit Dhar and Megan Roberts for input and comments on earlier versions of this manuscript. The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Education
- Psychology (miscellaneous)