Auditory Temporal Processing in Children With Specific Reading Disability With and Without Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

TLDR

The auditory temporal deficit hypothesis predicts that children with specific reading disability (RD) will exhibit a deficit in the perception of auditory temporal cues in nonspeech stimuli. Tasks assessing perception of auditory temporal and nontemporal cues were administered to children with RD without ADHD (n = 40), ADHD alone (n = 33), RD and ADHD (n = 36), and no impairment (n = 41). RD was linked to a specific deficit in detecting tone‑onset asynchrony but not to poorer performance on other temporal or nontemporal tasks, whereas ADHD caused a general decline across all tasks; overall, children with RD did not show a pervasive auditory temporal deficit, though they may be more sensitive to backward masking and the presence of ADHD markedly affected their psychoacoustic performance.

Abstract

The auditory temporal deficit hypothesis predicts that children with specific reading disability (RD) will exhibit a deficit in the perception of auditory temporal cues in nonspeech stimuli. Tasks assessing perception of auditory temporal and nontemporal cues were administered to children with (a) RD without attentiondeficit/ hyperactivity disorder (RD/no-ADHD, n =40), (b) ADHD alone (ADHD/no-RD, n =33), (c) RD and ADHD (RD/ADHD, n =36), and (d) no impairment (NI, n =41). The presence of RD was associated with a specific deficit in detection of a tone onset time asynchrony, but no reduction in performance on other tasks assessing perception of temporal or nontemporal acoustic cues. The presence of ADHD was associated with a general reduction in performance across tasks. The pattern of results did not indicate a pervasive deficit in auditory temporal function in children with RD, but did suggest a possible sensitivity to backward masking in this group. Results also indicated that the comorbid presence of ADHD is a significant factor in the performance of children with RD on psychoacoustic tasks.