The Use of Internal Speech by Children with Auditory Processing Problems

In a memory test based on the phonemic similarity effect, and using visually-presented homophone and non-homophone word lists, the serial recall of a group of 18 children with central auditory processing disorders (CAPD) was compared with that of a group of 18 normally hearing matched controls. The controls produced more errors on the homophone than the non-homophone list. The CAPD group showed only a slight bias towards more errors on the homophone list. This difference between the groups implied that, as expected, the controls used internal speech and preferred an articulatory- or auditory- rather than a visually-based processing code. The CAPD group, however, showed only a weak articulatory or auditory coding preference. Thus, the use of internal speech seemed poorly developed in the CAPD subjects.