Auditory Discrimination Techniques for Young Children

Auditory discrimination abilities seem to be closely related to reading achievement at the primary levels. In the intermediate grades, auditory discrimination ability seems to fade rapidly as a contributing variable to underachievement in reading. If poor auditory discrimination does indeed cause subnormal reading achievement, compensatory programs must be initiated before or during the primary school years. The Wepman Auditory Discrimination Test was administered, and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test was used to get an indication of the verbal intelligence of each S and to measure the effects that experimental programs might have on the children's verbal intelligence. Results suggest that behavior modification techniques can be used to enhance auditory discrimination in disadvantaged children, but that observational modeling techniques are equally effective. No change was found in verbal intelligence as a result of the children's participation in either experimental section.