Temporal Processing Ability In Good And Poor Chinese Readers

The present study compared the performance of good and poor readers on both visual and auditory temporal processing tasks, and probed into the possible role of temporal processing in Chinese reading.62normal school children of primary third grade were recruited in the experiment. Among them18participants were identified as good readers and16poor readers after taking several reading measures and Raven test. Then two Temporal Order Judgment tasks were conducted to both groups. Results of statistical analysis indicated that on one hand there was a significant between-group difference on both temporal processing tasks, but this difference disappeared when IQ was controlled. On the other hand, visual temporal processing but not auditory temporal processing made unique contribution to the variance of Chinese reading performance, even when the effect from IQ was excluded. The present study provided supportive evidence for the assumption that dyslexia may only represent the lower end of the continuum of normally distributed reading ability, and proved that when reading involves stronger visual-orthographic components, visual temporal processing may play a more important role than auditory temporal processing.