Dichotic Listening and Bisensory Memory Skills in Qualitatively Diverse Dyslexic Readers

Abstract

Dichotic listening and bisensory memory skills were investigated in 144 male middle-class second-grade (N=72) and fourth-grade (N=72) readers. Subjects were classified according to the Boder system, which distinguishes among normal and three types of dyslexic readers: dysphonetic (auditory dyslexic), dyseidetic (visual dyslexic), and alexic (combined). Results of the dichotic (recall of simultaneous auditory stimuli) and bisensory (recall of simultaneous visual and auditory stimuli) tasks indicated that normal and dyseidetic readers were able to attend, store, and retrieve stimuli at both grades and experimental rates of stimulus presentation better than alexic or dysphonetic readers. Ear asymmetry, as measured by dichotic right-ear advantage, did not discriminate normal from dyslexic groups. The greater task inability of the alexic and dysphonetic groups may be reflective of their difficulty in processing linguistic (left hemisphere) and spatial (right hemisphere) information that is basic to the reading process. The overall results suggest that remediation may be more difficult to implement with certain types of problem readers than with others.