Preference for visual scanning strategies versus phonological rehearsal in university students with reading disabilities.

This study investigated strategic preferences for visual scanning versus phonological rehearsal for recognizing words, pronounceable letter strings, and symbol strings by university students with reading disabilities (RD). Forty-seven subjects participated in this study: 20 students with reading disabilities who reported current difficulties in reading, as well as problems in learning to read at an early age; 15 students with learning disabilities (LD) who reported current difficulties in learning in areas other than reading but did not recall difficulties in learning to read; and 12 nondisabled readers (NR). The main dependent measures were response latency on a matching task for words, nonwords, and symbol strings, and posttest verbal reports of strategies used. Results showed that (a) most subjects in the NR group consistently used a strategy of phonological rehearsal for both words and nonwords, whereas most subjects with RD consistently used a strategy of visual scanning for these tasks, and (b) the NR group responded significantly faster than did the RD and LD groups to all three types of stimuli. The results indicate differences between university students who have a reading disability and nondisabled readers in strategic preferences for processing phonological information, with a clear preference by the former for using visual scanning rather than phonological rehearsal in matching tasks of words and nonwords.