Lillian Belmont

Auditory-Visual Integration, Intelligence and Reading Ability in School Children:

The developmental course of auditory-visual equivalence was studied in 220 elementary school children. It was found that improvement in auditory-visual integration was most rapid in the earliest school years and reached an asymptote by the fifth grade. The correlations obtained between IQ and auditory-visual integration suggested that the two features of functioning were associated but not synonymous. In contrast, the correlations between IQ and reading ability rose with age. These opposing age trends in correlations found between reading ability and auditory-visual equivalence and between reading ability and IQ are interpreted in terms of the possible attenuating effect introduced by the low age ceiling of the auditory visual test and the possibility that in acquiring reading skill primary perceptual factors are most important for initial acquisition but more general intellectual factors for later elaboration.

THE INTELLECTUAL PROFILE OF RETARDED READERS

In the present comparative study intellectual profile in normal and retarded readers was studied for samples homogeneous as to age (9- to 10-yr.-olds) and sex (boys) selected from a total population of school children. Ss were 150 retarded and 50 normal readers matched for birthdate and school class placement. Systematic equating for WISC IQ level was carried out. In general, weaknesses in intellectual functioning for the retarded readers were restricted to the Verbal Scale. The retarded readers, when matched with normal readers for Full Scale IQ, were characterized by better functioning on the subtests of the Performance Scale and poorer functioning on the Verbal Scale. The finding that inadequacy in language functioning rather than in perceptual or manipulative skills characterized the retarded readers was sustained by an intensive evaluation of use of language.

Auditory‐Visual Integration in Brain‐Damaged and Normal Children

In a study of auditory‐visual integrative functioning, the performances of 88 cerebral palsied children and 220 normal school‐age children were compared by means of an auditory‐visual pattern test. It was found that the auditory‐visual integrative capacities of the cerebral palsied children were significantly poorer than those of normal children of the same chronological age. The differences were sustained when groups comparable in mental age were studied. The findings are interpreted in terms of the relation of inter‐sensory integration to the development of behavior. It was suggested that certain of the perceptual and perceptual‐motor disturbances found in cerebral palsied children may be underlain by disturbed intersensory patterning.

AUDITORY-VISUAL INTERSENSORY PROCESSING AND VERBAL MEDIATION

The present study examined the question of whether auditory-visual intersensory processing is necessarily mediated verbally. Auditory-visual integration was examined in neurologically damaged patients with and without language disturbance and in a control group of non-brain-damaged patients. It was found that both groups of neurologically damaged patients performed more poorly than did the control group. However, there was no real difference in performance between brain-damaged patients with and without language disturbance. It was further found that the degree of language disorder was not related to the degree of auditory-visual integrative incompetence. It was concluded that the presence or absence of language disorder in the brain-injured patients did not differentially affect their auditory-visual integrative performance and that therefore perceptual processing is not necessarily mediated by language.

The perceptual organization of complex arrays by educable mentally subnormal children.

The perceptual selection and organization of complex stimulus arrays by 8− to 10-year-old educable mentally subnormal children indicated that such children were perceptually as reactive as were normal children, but 1) were less able to analyze their percepts, 2) tended to impose inappropriate organizations, 3) were less able to use verbal cues as an aid, and 4) were less influenced by social interaction in their perceptions. Mentally subnormal children with and without clinical signs of central nervous system damage did not differ in their organization of the complex stimulus arrays. The results are related to the issues of attention, motivation, and role of language in perception, as well as to the concept of brain damage.