Ohio Assessments for Educators (OAE) Foundations of Reading Practice Exam

What skill does Auditory Discrimination refer to?

1. The ability to blend sounds together

2. The ability to detect differences in sounds

3. The understanding of print format

4. The capability to read in a fluent manner

The correct answer is: The ability to detect differences in sounds

Auditory Discrimination is the skill that enables individuals to detect differences in sounds. This ability is crucial for language acquisition and literacy development, as it helps learners recognize and manipulate individual sounds in spoken language, such as phonemes. For example, being able to distinguish between the sounds "bat" and "pat" relies on auditory discrimination. This skill lays the foundation for phonemic awareness, which is important for understanding how sounds form words and how those words can be broken down or recombined. The other options refer to different skills: blending sounds together relates to phonemic awareness, understanding print format is tied to visual literacy, and reading fluently is about the ability to read text smoothly and accurately. Each of these skills plays an important role in overall reading development, but auditory discrimination specifically focuses on the differentiation of sounds.