Diagnostic considerations in children with reading disability

Summary Nine out of ten children with reading disability are found to have a basic syndrome consisting of signs related to lack of clear-cut cerebral dominance. Two of these nine children have additional signs suggestive of structural brain damage. One out of ten children with reading disability does not have any of these findings. The methods of detecting these groups are described and therapeutic implications indicated. The data described in this paper have been previously reported in: SILVER, A. A. and HAGIN, R., “Specific Reading Disability: Delineation of the Syndrome and Relationship to Cerebral Dominance,” COMPREHENSIVE PSYCHIATRY, 1, 2 (April, 1960), pp. 126–134. The author is indebted to Dr. Rosa A. Hagin for permission to use this material. From BULLETIN OF THE ORTON SOCIETY, Vol. XI, 1961, pp. 5–12.     

Specific language disability programs in Bloomington,Minnesota, public schools

V. Summary Once we clear out the undergrowth so that the Jungle of Confusion becomes a Forest of Learning, the child with a unique learning style or specific language disability can be invited into it to succeed, to learn and to “become”. There are many ways this child can go through the forest—we can find a guide to take him through, and he will be likely to see only what the guide shows him; or we can allow him to go through alone and risk the chance of losing him; or we can put him in a plane and fly him over so he can see from a distance but never get involved; or we can put him in a car and drive him around the perimeter; or we can set him on a path which will limit his exposure to learning; OR we can teach him to use a compass so he can work his way through with an independent sense of direction and security. If we honestly accept responsibility for our role in the lives of these children, wemust clean up our forest; and, we must teach children how to use a compass (basic skills). As leading explorers of knowledge, rather than merely critics of the negative or headmasters in the function of memory, or prophets of doom, we should give these children basic tools to allow them to learn and successfully develop a capacity for independent living. As Mrs. de Hirsch stated last evening, “children need living models who are intelligent—who have integrity and character”. Yes, they need models to lead them—models who believe in them, who will equip them and then let them honestly“become”. Our challenge is clear—wemust go from materials-centered teaching vagueness to child-centered teaching excellence if this Jungle of Confusion is to become a Forest of Learning. From a paper presented at the Twenty-first Annual Conference of the Orton Society, Washington, D. C., Nov. 14, 1970.     

The care of children with reading disability in Czechoslovakia

Annals of Dyslexia -     

Phonological and semantic priming in children with reading disability

Lexical priming was assessed in children with reading disability (RD) and in age-matched controls ( M = 11.5 years), in visual and auditory lexical decision tasks. In the visual task, children with RD were found to have deficits in semantic (SHIP–BOAT), phonological/graphemic (GOAT–BOAT), and combined (FLOAT–BOAT) priming. The same pattern of semantic priming deficits also occurred in auditory lexical decisions, suggesting that the semantic deficits are not confined to reading. Children with RD also showed less priming than reading-age matched controls, suggesting that their priming deficits are not simply due to lower reading level but are due to the reading disability in particular. These semantic deficits may contribute to both the word reading and the comprehension problems seen in children with RD.     

Phonological knowledge and naming ability in children with reading disability

Children who are poor readers have difficulty naming pictured objects. Their naming difficulty could be a result of inadequate representations of the phonology of words, inadequate processing of those representations, or both. In this study, third-grade good and poor readers were tested on object naming, and, in cases of naming failure, forced-choice recognition tasks were used to probe their knowledge of the phonology of the object names. The two reading groups showed no differences in their ability to select the initial phonemes or rhymes of object names they had not produced spontaneously. Moreover, initial phoneme prompts were helpful for both reading groups. The children differed, however, in their ability to produce words after being given rhyme information. The results indicated that, except in the ability to manipulate explicitly phonological information, the poor readers; performance was qualitatively similar to that of the good readers. It is suggested that training in phonological analysis may help poor readers overcome the deficiencies in establishing and processing phonological representations that lead to their quantitative deficit in object naming.     

Phonological processes as predictors of specific reading skills in children at risk for reading failure

Children at risk for reading disability were evaluated as kindergartners and again as first graders to determine (1) intercorrelations among phonological processing tasks and (2) the relationship of such tasks to word identification and word attack. With IQ controlled, there were no intercorrelations among measures of phonological awareness, phonetic recoding in working memory, and phonological recoding in lexical access. Thus, these results failed to substantiate the concept of a general phonological processing ability. Partial correlations controlling for IQ revealed no relationship between reading and phonological awareness or phonetic recoding in working memory. In contrast, lexical access measures were significantly, albeit moderately, correlated with word identification but not word attack. Word attack and word identification were predicted by different combinations of variables. These results suggest that lexical access ability is an important factor in reading acquisition and that different combinations of phonological processes may be related to different aspects of reading.This research was supported by PHS grant HD 21887 to Bowman Gray School of Medicine and by PHS Grant NS 19413 to UNC-Greensboro Subcontract to Bowman Gray School of Medicine.     

Information processing deficits in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, inattentive type, and children with reading disability

We examined the information processing capabilities of children diagnosed with the inattentive subtype of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) who had been characterized as having a sluggish cognitive tempo. Children referred for school-related problems (n = 81) and nonreferred community controls (n = 149) participated. Of the referred children, 24 met criteria for ADHD, 42 met criteria for reading disability (RD), and 9 of these were comorbid for RD and ADHD. Children with ADHD differed from those without ADHD on a visual search task but not on an auditory processing task; the reverse was true for children with RD. Decomposition of the visual search task into component operations demonstrated that children in the ADHD group had a slow processing rate that was not attributable to inattention. The children with ADHD were not globally poor at information processing or inattentive, but they demonstrated diminished speed of visual processing.     

Risk for reading disability as a function of parental history in three family studies

Inverse Bayesian analyses were applied to data from three large family studies of reading disability to estimate the posterior probability that an offspring will be affected, given that a parent reported a history of learning problems. Prior analyses presented elsewhere (Pennington et al., 1990), suggest that family transmission in these three studies is consistent with major gene or polygene influence. Posterior probability rates are presented in this paper for male to female sex ratios of 3.5:1 and 1:1, with population incidences estimated at 0.05 and 0.10. Results indicate that offspring risk rates are significantly elevated if a parent reports a history of RD. Specifically, an offspring's risk was increased 2 to 80 times over population expectancies when there was an affected parent. While the posterior probabilities and relative risk rates were fairly similar across studies, there was also some variation, which may reflect the different genetic mechanisms operating in these families. This study concludes that both absolute and relative risks are sufficiently increased in families with RD parents to warrant use of family history as a component in clinical evaluation. It is also evident from these results that consideration of the apparent mode of genetic transmission in families may provide even better information as to offspring risk, when family history is obtained.     

The effectiveness of Orton‐Gillingham‐based instruction with Singaporean children with specific reading disability (dyslexia)

This article, written by Assistant Professor Noel Chia from the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and Professor Stephen Houghton from the Centre for Child and Adolescent Related Disorders, University of Western Australia, reports an empirical evaluation of a one‐year Orton‐Gillingham instruction based reading intervention programme. The programme was conducted with 77 (61 male and 16 female) Singaporean primary school‐aged children with dyslexia and a pre‐test/post‐test experimental group design was incorporated into a hybrid multiple baseline to inform analysis. A multivariate analysis of variance revealed a highly significant main effect for pre‐post on the composite dependent variable made up of word recognition age (WRA), word expression age (WEA) and sentence reading age (SRA) scores. Univariate F tests revealed significant improvements in WRA and WEA. These effects were modest (7% and 8% variance accounted for, respectively) but high enough to be considered educationally significant. There was no main effect for SRA and no main effect as well as no significant interaction effect for teacher, indicating that teacher was not a moderating variable in the gains made on the subtests.     

Familial patterns of expression of specific reading disability in a population sample

Summary A sample school population of 75 family units of equal size was investigated for expression of specific reading disability. 25.3% of the total children showed specific reading disability as defined in this study. By using spelling achievement as the criterion for the presence of the disability, the incidence of the disorder was shown to be much higher in certain families than in others, with clear sibling aggregation. The siblings of specific-reading-disability cases demonstrated lower spelling competence than the total siblings in normal families, even when well above a crippling level. Both within individual families and by grades, the spelling rating in relation to grade norms of the specific-reading-disability family cases with their siblings tended to decline with age, in contrast to normal families where it tended to improve with age. This pattern was even more striking if the greater language competence of females, now quite generally accepted and further supported by this study, was taken into account. It was demonstrated that the above patterns were not primarily a product of intelligence level or teaching methods. The bearing of these findings on the tenability of the most common, current hypotheses concerning causation was briefly discussed. From the Language Clinic and Division of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital.     

Effects of instruction on beginning reading skills in children at risk for reading disability

Children identified in kindergarten as being at risk for reading disability were taught in grades one and two using one of two methods of reading instruction, a structured phonics code-emphasis approach or an approach emphasizing use of context. At the end of first and second grade, children were tested on measures of achievement in word identification, word attack, passage comprehension and spelling. Those in the Code group earned uniformly higher scores on all achievement measures at the end of first and second grades. At the end of first grade, statistically significant differences between groups were found on nonword reading and spelling of phonetically regular words. At the end of second grade, significant differences were found in reading of polysyllabic real words and decoding of monosyllabic and polysyllabic nonsense words. It was concluded that reading instruction does have an important impact on acquisition of early reading skills, and that structured, systematic phonics instruction results in more favorable outcome than does a context emphasis approach.This research was supported by PHS Grant HD21887 to Bowman Gray School of Medicine and by PHS Grant NS19413 to UNC-Greensboro, Subcontract to Bowman Gray School of Medicine. Request for reprints should be addressed to Dr. Idalyn S. Brown, Section of Neuropsychology, Department of Neurology, Bowman Gray School of Medicine, 300 South Hawthorne Road, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, 27103, USA.     

An embodied cognition approach to enhancing reading achievement in New York City public schools: Promising evidence

The study purpose was to examine the relationship between the Mark DeGarmo Dance (AKA Dynamic Forms, Inc.) (MDD) program, involving principles of embodied cognition, and student achievement over time. The sample included fourth grade students (N = 169) in schools (N = 4) in New York City Public School District whose teachers and students participated in the MDD program. Using a pretest posttest single group design and hierarchical linear modeling, the results of this study analyze student achievement as measured by standardized test scores. Teacher survey results are also reported. The achievement results reveal a significant increase in reading between pretest and posttest for students that were in the program. Teachers reported adequate fidelity of implementation.     

The effect of administrative pay and local property taxes on student achievement scores: Evidence from New Jersey public schools

We theorized that student test score performance will be positively related to the percentage of school district revenues raised from local taxes and with salary levels of school district administrators. Using both fixed and random effects panel analyses, we examine data for 217 Kindergarten-to-Grade 12 school districts in New Jersey for the years 2002–2009. Our results support the inference that increases in the percent of school funds raised locally have a positive influence on student test scores. However, the results for our hypothesis involving administrative costs were mixed. Administrative salaries and administrative spending were found to be positively related to test score performance in the one-way time fixed effects model, but not in the two-way models. Finally, classroom spending and the student–faculty ratio were found to be positive and significant in some of the tests, although not robust to alternative specifications.     

Relationships between cognitive variables,memory and phonological awareness in children with a specific reading difficulty

Abstract

The aim of this study was to examine the relationships between verbal short‐term memory, phonemic awareness, and reading ability, in children with a specific reading difficulty. The results confirmed the frequently reported finding that most, if not all children with a specific reading difficulty have poor phonological awareness. In addition, poor phonological awareness in the reading‐difficulty group was associated with significantly poorer nonword reading ability, and with poorer phonological memory. When the reading‐difficulty group was further subdivided with respect to Digit Span performance there was no difference in nonword reading with respect to this overall verbal short‐term memory measure. However, poor short‐term memory, regardless of phonological awareness level, was significantly associated with a lower WISC III Verbal IQ, in particular, significantly poorer performance on the WISC III Vocabulary, Comprehension and Similarities subtests, as well as with significantly poorer reading comprehension. In addition, poor short‐term memory regardless of phonological awareness ability was associated with poorer spelling and arithmetic performance.