A study of discrimination and perceptual learning with retarded readers

60 4th and 5th graders whose reading level ranged from 8-24 mo. behind their grade placement level, were screened for speech, auditory, visual, and emotional problems and equated for socioeconomic factors which might influence normal reading development. Ss were matched for age, sex, grade placement, and intellectual level with a sample of normal readers. Each sample consisted of 39 males and 21 females. The experiment consisted of 2 learning tasks: discrimination learning where the stimuli were presented both simultaneously and successively and perceptual learning tasks. The retarded reader differed significantly in learning from the normal reader on the successive discrimination learning task, the simultaneous discrimination learning task, and 3 perceptual tasks. (23 ref.)