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In a study of the relation of auditory‐visual integration in a total population sample of retarded readers, they were found to be significantly less able integrators than normal readers are. The findings were interpreted as indicating that defects in auditory‐visual integration contribute to reading incompetence.

The developmental course of auditory-visual equivalence was studied in 220 elementary school children. It was found that improvement in auditory-visual integration was most rapid in the earliest school years and reached an asymptote by the fifth grade. The correlations obtained between IQ and auditory-visual integration suggested that the two features of functioning were nssociated but not synonymous. In contrast, the correlations between IQ and reading ability rose with age. These opposing age trends in correlations found between reading ability and auditory-visual equivalence and between reading ability and I Q are interpreted in terms of the possible attenuating effect introduced by the low age ceiling of the auditory visual test and the possibility that in acquiring reading skill primary perceptual factors are most important for initial acquisition but more general intellectual factors for later elaboration.T h e present study reports the developmental course of auditory-visual equivalence in children between 5 and 12 yr. of age and the relation of such equivalence co intellecmal status and the emergence of reading skill. The development of integrative and equivalence relationships between the auditory and visual systems has both theoretical and practical significance. A t the most general level, information on this aspect of development can provide a fuller understanding of the processes underlying changes with age in rhe organization of the perceived world of children and so provide clues as to the basis for changing behavioral organiza--tion. A t a practical level, the development of integrative organization between the auditory and visual systems appears to be essential for the acquisition of such a primary educational skill as reading ( 3 ) in which vis~ially presented and, therefore, spatially distributed stimulation comes to be treated as equivalent to auditorily presented and temporally distributed stimulus patterns. A growing body of evidence in comparative psychology (2, 11 ), neurophysiology ( 14, 15), perception ( 10, 1 6 ) , and learning (5, 6, 1 2 ) poincs to the importance of intersensory liaison, i.e., the integration of information arriving as inputs from the different sensory modalities, as a basic mechanism subserving adaptive functioning. However, information on the development of such incegmtions with age in children is still scanty.

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The relation of birth order and family size to intellectual performance, as measured by the Raven Progressive Matrices, was examined among nearly all of 400,000 19-year-old males born in the Netherlands in 1944 through 1947. It was found that birth order and family size had independent effects on intellectual performance. Effects of family size were not present in all social classes, but effects of birth order were consistent across social class.