Vocal reaction times of children with CAPD, age-matched peers, and young adults to printed words

The purpose of this study was to determine if there were differences between children identified in a clinical setting as having Central Auditory Processing Disorder (CAPD), an age-matched peer group, and young adults when tested using a vocal reaction time (VRT) format. The children with CAPD were matched by gender and age to peers between the ages of 8 and 10 years. All speakers were presented visually with printed third-grade-level one- and two- syllable words (e.g, boy, mother) as well as the syllable 'uh.' Participants space each word according to the criteria of seven separate conditions, which included immediate naming tasks (0 s delay), a short delay before speaking (Λ¹ = 1.5 s), and a longer delay before speaking (M = 4.0 s). Speakers' VRTs were measured, and production errors were recorded. All speakers took longer to respond in the immediate-response conditions than the delayed- response conditions. Statistically significant differences were found for the immediate-response conditions, with means for the children with CAPD reflecting slower performance than that of their peers. The peer group was slower than the adults. For the delayed conditions, both groups of children responded with significantly longer VRTs than the adults. The two groups of children did not differ for these tasks. The children with CAPD produced a significantly greater number of errors than their peers, specifically for the long-delay conditions. The adults showed no performance differences across the immediate response conditions nor across the delayed conditions. These results suggested that children with CAPD may have processing difficulties with visual stimuli.