Auditory Measures of Attention & Working Memory in Children with Learning Disability & Typically Developing Children

Abstract

Learning disability is a general term that describes specific kinds of learning problems. Children with learning disability have deficits in selective attention and working memory. It is believed that difficulties in working memory will influence the ability to attend to a task. The present study was done to investigate and compare the performances of children with learning disability and typically developing children in tasks evaluating auditory aspects of selective attention, divided attention and working memory capacity. 19 children with age range 10 to 14 years participated in the study. Typically developing children group consisted of 10 participants. Learning disability group consisted of 9 children. Dichotic Listening test, auditory stroop task and Digit Backward Recall task were the tests used for assessment of selective attention, divided attention and working memory capacity. Repeated measures of ANOVA was performed to investigate the effects of group (learning disability group and typically developing children group) and ear (Directed Right, directed left and free listening) in dichotic listening task. The test result showed significant main effect of group and ear as well as children in both the groups performed best for directed right condition of directed left task followed by free listening and directed left condition. Independent ‘t’ test results  revealed that there was a significant differences in stroop reaction time, digit backward recall and stroop score.  In conclusion typically developing children performed better than that of children with learning disability in both tasks.

Keywords: learning disability, typically, children