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A COMPARISON OF VESTIBULAR AND OCULAR MOTOR PERFORMANCE BETWEEN NORMAL-READING AND READING-IMPAIRED CHILDREN
Abstract
Sixty children (twenty normal readers and forty with reading impairments) were evaluated on a test battery designed to investigate vestibular and ocular motor function. The children ranged from ten to fourteen years of age with an equal number of males and females. All subjects had normal intelligence as measured on either the Slosson Intelligence Test (SIT) or the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R). Each subject was free of auditory and vestibular disease. All had normal visual acuity and no ocular muscle pathology. The experimental group consisted of children previously identified as being reading-impaired by their school system. These children were tested on the word attack, word identification, and passage comprehension subtests of the Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests. The experimental group was required to score below the 16th percentile on at least two of the three above mentioned subtests. The control group had no known reading problems and was required to score above the 40th percentile on all three of the Woodcock subtests. All subjects were evaluated for their performance on ocular pursuit tracking and ocular saccadic eye movements. Performane on a test of vestibular function was measured by examining the slow phase eye movement velocity created by a sinusoidal harmonic accelerator (Computerized Rotary Chair). The results of the study found no group differences for the vestibular and ocular pursuit subtests. The eye movement control exercised by the vestibular system does not appear to be a significant factor related to eye movement control needed for reading. However, differences in saccadic eye velocity were noted between groups. The saccadic eye speed of the normal group was significantly higher (faster) than that of the experimental group (F = 5.80, P = < .05). It is postulated that although the saccadic eye movement system is not the only factor responsible for abnormal reading ability, it may be an important contributing factor and needs to be investigated further.
Subject Area
Audiology
Recommended Citation
CYR, DAVID GREGORY, "A COMPARISON OF VESTIBULAR AND OCULAR MOTOR PERFORMANCE BETWEEN NORMAL-READING AND READING-IMPAIRED CHILDREN" (1983). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI8412301.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI8412301