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The present study investigated the relationship between modality functioning and reading achievement. Auditory, visual and combined auditory-visual serial learning tasks were administered to normal and retarded readers at three grade levels (N= 48). The data indicated that retarded readers exhibited a markedly uneven pattern of learning efficiency. Their performance was especially poor with regard to auditory tasks, whereas their visual learning skills were almost equivalent to those of the normal reader group.

Childhood schizophrenia is a disorder that is characterized by widespread involvement of some or all of the physiological and psychological processes. Development may be impaired qualitatively by deviation from the norm or quantitatively by retardation or acceleration. Irregularities may appear in a specific child, such as acceleration in one psychological area or in a physiological area in combination with retardation in some other area. So striking is the disorder in development that the nuclear problem in childhood schizophrenia has been termed "dysmaturation."5Because of these complexities, it would appear to be valuable to select certain areas for intensive study in both the schizophrenic and the normal. One area in which aberrations are frequent and for which there are excellent means of study available would be that of perception. Although disturbances in perception have been noted by many investigators, there is little agreement as to precisely what the deviation

One perceptual skill which may underlie reading behavior is the ability to process sequentially presented auditory and visual information. The present study investigated the hypothesis that retarded and potentially retarded readers would exhibit difficulty in rapidly shifting attention between auditory and visual stimuli. Possible age differences in this behavior were also examined. Reaction times to a series of lights and sounds were obtained from normal and retarded readers at three grade levels. The findings indicated that at all ages poor and good readers differed significantly in the ease with which attention was shifted from one modality to another.