Reading competence of words and pseudo words, school performance and listening skills in primary schools

ABSTRACT

Purpose

To associate the word and non-word reading competence of students aged from 7 to 10 years according to variables as gender, age, school performance and auditory abilities.

Methods

Observational analytic cross-sectional study with a non-probabilistic sample. The study was conducted with 109 students of three educational institutions. The Word-Pseudoword Reading Competence Test, the Test for School Achievement, the Sound Localization Test, the Sequential Memory Test for Verbal and Non-verbal Sounds were used as instruments.

Results

In most children the Word-Pseudoword Reading Competence Test showed normal results. Most students showed low performance in the Test for School Achievement. The Simplified Auditory Processing Test resulted in a higher percentage of adequacy of the sound localization ability, followed by the auditory ability of simple temporal ordering for non-verbal sounds and verbal sounds. There was a significant association between the results of the Word-Pseudoword Reading Competence Test and the Test for School Achievement and its subtests.

Conclusion

The study revealed an association between word and non-word reading competence and school performance of children aged from 7 to 10 years, 11 months and 29 days. However, there was no evidence of association between word and pseudoword reading competence, sociodemographic variables and auditory abilities.

Keywords:
Academic institutions; Auditory perception; Understanding; Reading; Language; Speech therapy