Presumably innate and acquired automatic processes in children with attention and/or reading disorders.

Innate and acquired automatic information processing was compared in non-problem students and three groups of educationally troublesome children: two normal reading groups with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), one without and one with hyperactivity, and a non-hyperactive Reading Disabled (RD) group. All groups displayed reliable, presumably innate, automatic processing on measures of temporal and frequency sensitivity, but the two ADD groups made less precise judgements than controls. Contrasted with controls, all clinical groups exhibited delayed automatization in arithmetic computation, but the handicapped groups did not differ from controls on other measures of acquired automatization (speed of writing and naming).