Do Children with Learning Disabilities Outgrow Deficits in Selective Auditory Attention? Evidence from Dichotic Listening in Adults with Learning Disabilities

Previous research suggests that children with learning disabilities (LD) evidence similar degrees of cerebral lateralization as nondisabled children, but they perform at a degraded level due to deficits in selective attention. The developmental lag hypothesis predicts that these deficits should attenuate in children with LD with maturity. The present study examined this notion by evaluating dichotic listening ability using both free recall and directed attention conditions in 24 adults with LD and their age- and sex-matched controls. Dichotic syllables, words, and sentences were employed. The results indicated similar degrees of cerebral lateralization but significantly degraded levels of accuracy in the adults with LD in the free recall and directed attention conditions across all levels of semantic processing. Thus, it would appear that adults with LD evidence similar deficits in lateralized selective auditory linguistic processing as found in children with LD.