PERCEPTION OF AMPLITUDE ONSET SIGNALS IN CHINESE CHILDREN WITH READING DIFFICULTIES AND SPECIFIC LANGUAGE IMPAIRMENTS

Chun-Han CHIANG
I-Chen CHEN
Hsiao-Lan WANG

Department of Special Education, National Taiwan
Normal University, Taiwan

Recived: 13.10.2016
Accepted: 21.11.2016
Original article

Citation:Chiang CH, Chen IC, Wang HL. Perception of amplitude onset signals in Chinese children with reading difficulties and specific language impairments. J Spec Educ Rehab 2017; 18(1-2):109-125.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.19057/jser.2017.22

Abstract

This study explored the fundamental auditory processing of sound amplitude in Chinese children with both reading and language difficulties. Fifteen children with Chinese reading difficulties (RD), fifteen children with Chinese reading difficulties and specific language impairments (RD-SLI), and sixteen age-matched controls (CA) were recruited from local primary schools in Taiwan. The three groups were compared specifically on phonological awareness and auditory amplitude onset discrimination. Our preliminary results confirmed that age-matched controls performed significantly better on all of the phonological and auditory measurements, compared to both groups of children with RD. Children with RD-SLI performed significantly worse than children with RD in Chinese character recognition. Also Chinese children with RD-SLI were found to be poorer in phonological performance and to be more insensitive to complex sound amplitude onset, compared with Chinese children with RD.

We concluded that poor auditory discrimination of sound amplitude onset might be fundamental to characterize Chinese children with reading difficulties and language impairments.

Keywords: Reading Difficulties (RD), Specific Language Impairments (SLI), Phonological Processing, Auditory Amplitude Perception, Chinese character recognition, Chinese Mandarin

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