Short-Term Sentence Memory in Children with Auditory Processing Disorders A Group Comparison

Abstract

Objective: To compare sentence repetition performance of different groups of children with Auditory Processing Disorders (APD) and to examine the relationship between age or respectively nonverbal intelligence and sentence recall. Material: Nonverbal intelligence was measured with the Coloured Matrices, in addition the children completed a standardized test of sentence repetition (SR) which requires to repeat spoken sentences (subtest of the Heidelberger Sprachentwick-lungstest). Participants: Three clinical groups (n = 49 with monosymptomatic APD; n = 29 with APD + developmental language impairment; n = 14 with APD + developmental dyslexia); two control groups (n = 13 typically developing peers without any clinical developmental disorder; n = 10 children with slight reduced nonverbal intelligence). Results: The analysis showed a significant group effect (p = 0.0007). The best performance was achieved by the normal controls (T-score 52.9; SD 6.4; Min 42; Max 59) followed by children with monosymptomatic APD (43.2; SD 9.2), children with the co-morbid-conditions APD + developmental dyslexia (43.1; SD 10.3), and APD + developmental language impairment (39.4; SD 9.4). The clinical control group presented the lowest performance, on average (38.6; SD 9.6). Accordingly, language-impaired children and children with slight reductions in intelligence could poorly use their grammatical knowledge for SR. A statistically significant improvement in SR was verified with the increase of age with the exception of children belonging to the small group with lowered intelligence. This group comprised the oldest children. Nonverbal intelligence correlated positively with SR only in children with below average-range intelligence (0.62; p = 0.054). Conclusion: The absence of APD, SLI as well as the presence of normal intelligence facilitated the use of phonological information for SR.