Auditory-Visual and Temporal-Spatial Integration Ability of Good and Poor Readers at Two Grade Levels

An investigation was made into the relation between grade level, reading ability and performance on six different auditory-visual integration tasks. The subjects, 38 second grade and 38 fifth grade students selected on the basis of their scores on the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test, were individually tested for ability to perform on the six tasks. The results showed a significant difference in ability to perform the integration tasks between the grade two and grade five subjects with the latter being better. A relation was found between reading level and certain of the integration tasks, with this relation varying between the two grades. Some of the tasks were found to be easier to perform than others with tasks involving skills used in reading, that is the visual spatial-auditory temporal ones, being the least difficult. Implications of the findings were discussed and further research suggested