The measurement of auditory abilities of blind, partially sighted and sighted children. Applied Psychological Measurements

A battery of 26 auditory tests was given to groups of 30 blind, partially sighted, and sighted children. Primary factors defined by the tests corresponded closely to those previously found with a similar battery (Stankov & Horn, in press). Overall, the blind and sighted were equal on most of the abilities measured by the tests; however, differences could be observed if particular primaries were considered. Blind children performed better on tests measuring tonal memory but worse on tests of masking and rhythm. The partially sighted group demonstrated poorer performance than the other two groups; this was attributed to possible cognitive and/or personality problems in addition to those associated with reduced vision. Auditory abilities have been studied since the beginnings of experimental psychology, but two papers by Karlin (1941, 1942) can be viewed as landmarks for the approach to be adopted here. In these papers Karlin used the Thurstonian method of factor analysis in order to analyze correlations among a large number of auditory tests: He was interested in discovering primary auditory mental abilities. His tests can be rough-ly divided into two groups. The first group he se-lected from a field already more than 20 years old-the field of &dquo;musical abilities.&dquo; Seashore pioneered the research in this area; and Wing, Drake, Bentley, and many others followed hi