Comprehension of humor in children with nonverbal learning disabilities,reading disabilities,and without learning disabilities

The normal development of humor in children has been well documented with a predictable course that is tied to social, cognitive, and linguistic development in children. This study explored humor comprehension in children with nonverbal learning disabilities (NVLD). Children with NVLD were compared with children with reading disabilities and a comparison group of children with no learning disabilities to assess their comprehension of humor. The humor test was composed of a joke and cartoon section. No group differences in humor comprehension were found when the NVLD group was defined as having visual–spatial and visual reasoning deficits. However, when the NVLD group was divided into children with and without social perceptual difficulties as defined by a direct measure of social comprehension, significant group differences were found in the levels of humor comprehension. These results support the association of humor comprehension with social perception and lend tentative support to the hypothesis that children with NVLD may not be a homogenous group. Future study directions include further exploration into the nature of the association between humor comprehension and social perception as well as closer examination of the heterogeneity of NVLD.     

Cognitive predictors of arithmetic,reading, and spelling in Brazilian Portuguese-speaking children

Reading and Writing - We examined the contribution of a major predictor of basic literacy ability—phoneme awareness—to individual differences in two arithmetic computation tasks: a...     

Prevalence of combined reading and arithmetic disabilities

This study assesses the prevalence of combined reading and arithmetic disabilities in 799 Dutch schoolchildren using st dardized school achievement tests. Scores of arithmetic, word recognition, reading comprehension, and spelling of child in fourth and fifth grade were used. The main interest involved the co-occurrence of word recognition and arithmetic d abilities because of their possible relationship. The authors find a percentage of 7.6 for combined reading and arithme disabilities. Reading disabilities and arithmetic disabilities co-occurred more often than expected based on rates of the s arate conditions. Children with combined reading and arithmetic disabilities seem to have more generalized achievem difficulties than single-deficit groups. Different operationalizations for reading disabilities (spelling and reading comp hension measures instead of word recognition) led, in part, to selection of other children. This might imply that differ processes underlie the relationship between arithmetic and word recognition disabilities compared to the relationship arithmetic disabilities with difficulties in spelling and reading comprehension.     

Communication competence in reading and learning disabilities

Conclusion The evidence indicates that learning-disabled children show pervasive and enduring language problems across a wide variety of language tasks. The studies suggest that the problems experienced by learning and reading-disabled children may fall into the categories of phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics as well as nonverbal communication. In terms of nonverbal communication, these children are less accurate in interpreting nonverbal auditory and visual cues. In phonology, it appears that they are less skilled in detecting the segments of single words and thus have difficulty establishing phoneme to grapheme correspondence. In the area of syntax, learning-disabled males are less skilled in dealing with inflection and the comprehension and creation of complex sentences. In semantics, they are less adequate than nondisabled children in defining words, creating sentences, and classifying objects into categories. They show less adequate sentence production, are less skilled at recognizing their errors, and are significantly slower in generating verbal responses. Finally, there is one study that suggests that learning-disabled children may be discriminated by their use of language in social situations. This paper was presented at the 29th Annual Conference of The Orton Society at Minneapolis, November, 1978.     

Phonemic awareness,spontaneous writing,and reading and spelling development from a preventive perspective

This study examined the nature of the relationship between phonemic awareness and reading and spelling development and focused particularlyon the development of early self-directed writing. The spontaneous writing attempts of 44 first-graders were followed on 6 test occasions from the start of grade 1 (7 years) until the middle of grade 2. The children were divided into 2 groups, one group (N = 21) with a high level of phonemic awareness on entry into grade 1 (HPA) and one group (N = 23) with a low level on entry (LPA). The connection between level of inventedspelling used in the self-directed writing and later reading andspelling achievement in grades 1 and 2 was investigated. The results showed remarkable differences between the two groups. Level of invented spelling at Time 1 was highly predictive of both reading and spelling achievement at the end of grades 1 and 2, but only for the HPA group. With Time of Mastery regarding phonemic spelling as the independent variable and reading and spelling at the end of grade 2 as the dependent variable, regressions analysis indicated strong direct effects of early phonemic spelling upon later reading and spelling development, but only for the LPA children. The two groups showed different patterns of development in learning to read and spell during grades 1 and 2.     

Students with reading and spelling disabilities: peer groups and educational attainment in secondary education

The present study investigated whether the members of adolescents' peer groups are similar in reading and spelling disabilities and whether this similarity contributes to subsequent school achievement and educational attainment. The sample consisted of 375 Finnish adolescents whose reading and spelling disabilities were assessed at age 16 with the Finnish dyslexia screening test. The students also completed a sociometric nomination measure that was used to identify their peer groups. Register information on participants' school grades also was available, and educational attainment in secondary education was recorded 5 years after completion of the 9 years of basic education. The results revealed that the members of adolescent peer groups resembled each other in reading disabilities but not in those of spelling. Reading disabilities and academic achievement shared within the peer group also contributed to educational attainment in secondary education. Finally, reading disabilities played a larger role in educational attainment among males than among females.     

Sound links in reading and spelling with discrepancy-defined dyslexics and children with moderate learning difficulties

This study reports the effects of a highly structuredindividually administered remedial teaching programmefor children with reading difficulties. Thephonological awareness, reading accuracy and spellingattainments of 28 children diagnosed as having low IQ(Mean IQ = 66, SD = 5.3) were compared with those of29 children diagnosed as having discrepancy defineddyslexia (Mean IQ = 95, SD = 8.4). The responsivenessto intervention of each group was also compared withteacher-referred reading-delayed children matched forinitial literacy skills. For reading accuracy andphonological awareness the dyslexic group respondedmore successfully than the low IQ group. The twogroups did not differ significantly on spelling. It isargued that the reading accuracy and phonologicalawareness results are in keeping with thephonological-core variable-difference (Stanovich &Siegel 1994) model of reading disability and that thegains of all groups on all measures were such thatthere is no obvious benefit in using IQ to selectchildren for a programme of individual teaching whichcombines reading with phonological awarenesstraining.     

Component processes of early reading, spelling, and narrative writing skills in Turkish: a longitudinal study

The study examined: (a) the role of phonological, grammatical, and rapid automatized naming (RAN) skills in reading and spelling development; and (b) the component processes of early narrative writing skills. Fifty-seven Turkish-speaking children were followed from Grade 1 to Grade 2. RAN was the most powerful longitudinal predictor of reading speed and its effect was evident even when previous reading skills were taken into account. Broadly, the phonological and grammatical skills made reliable contributions to spelling performance but their effects were completely mediated by previous spelling skills. Different aspects of the narrative writing skills were related to different processing skills. While handwriting speed predicted writing fluency, spelling accuracy predicted spelling error rate. Vocabulary and working memory were the only reliable longitudinal predictors of the quality of composition content. The overall model, however, failed to explain any reliable variance in the structural quality of the compositions.     

Perceptual organization,phonological awareness,and reading comprehension in adults with and without learning disabilities

It is not clear from research whether, or to what extent, reading comprehension is impaired in adults who have learning disabilities (LD). The influence of perceptual organization (PO) and phonological awareness (PA) on reading comprehension was investigated. PO and PA are cognitive functions that have been examined in previous research for their roles in nonverbal LD and phonological dyslexia, respectively. Nonverbal tests of PO and non-reading tests of PA were administered to a sample of adults with postsecondary education. Approximately two thirds of the sample had previously been diagnosed as having LD. In a multiple regression analysis, tests of PO and PA were used to predict scores for tests of reading comprehension and mechanics. Despite the nonverbal nature of the perceptual organizational test stimuli, PO strongly predicted reading comprehension. Tests of PA predicted decoding and reading speed. Results were interpreted as supporting the hypothesis that integrative processes usually characterized as nonverbal were nonetheless used by readers with and without disabilities to understand text. The study’s findings have implications for understanding the reading of adults with learning disabilities, and the nature of reading comprehension in general.     

Matthew effects in children with learning disabilities: Development of reading,IQ, and psychosocial problems from grade 2 to grade 8

Reading achievement, IQ, and behavior problems were assessed in second and eighth grade for a longitudinal sample of 57 children. Changes in these scores over time were compared for children with no learning disabilities versus children with math or reading disabilities (research-identified and/or school-identified). A widening of the group difference in IQ was seen between the math disabled and nondisabled groups, but otherwise the gaps between groups remained unchanged or narrowed over the six-year interval, indicating that hypothesized negative consequences of initial academic difficulties (“Matthew effects”) did not occur for most of the children with learning disabilities. Elevated rates of behavior problems were seen only for the group with math disabilities, suggesting that the type of learning disability needs to be taken into account in research on the association between academic and psychosocial problems.     

Effectiveness of the DISTAR reading program for children with learning disabilities

The reading achievement of students with learning disabilities who received reading instruction through the DISTAR program was compared to that of similar students using basal reader materials. The overall reading scores of the groups were not significantly different following 1 and 2 years of instruction, although students in the DISTAR program had somewhat better word attack skills.     

Dynamic testing, working memory, and reading comprehension growth in children with reading disabilities

This longitudinal study assessed (a) whether performance changes in working memory (WM) as a function of dynamic testing were related to growth in reading comprehension and (b) whether WM performance among subgroups of children with reading disabilities (RD; children with RD only, children with both reading and arithmetic deficits, and low verbal IQ readers) varied as a function of dynamic testing. A battery of memory and reading measures was administered to 78 children (11.6 years) across three testing waves spaced 1 year apart. WM tasks were presented under initial and dynamic testing conditions (referred to as gain and maintenance testing). The important results were that (a) WM performance as a function of maintenance testing was a significant moderator of growth in reading comprehension and (b) WM performance of children with RD was statistically comparable within subgroups of RD but inferior to that of skilled readers across all testing conditions. The results support the notion that children's WM performance under dynamic testing conditions was related to the rate of growth in reading comprehension but unrelated to subgroup differences in reading.     

The cognitive and academic profiles of reading and mathematics learning disabilities

The purpose of this study was to examine the cognitive and academic profiles associated with learning disability (LD) in reading comprehension, word reading, applied problems, and calculations. The goal was to assess the specificity hypothesis, in which unexpected underachievement associated with LD is represented in terms of distinctive patterns of cognitive and academic strengths and weaknesses. At the start of 3rd grade, the authors assessed 684 students on five cognitive dimensions (nonverbal problem solving, processing speed, concept formation, language, and working memory), and across Grades 3 through 5, the authors assessed performance in each academic area three to four times. Based on final intercept, the authors classified students as LD or not LD in each of the four academic areas. For each of these four LD variables, they conducted multivariate cognitive profile analysis and academic profile analysis. Results, which generally supported the specificity hypothesis, are discussed in terms of the potential connections between reading and mathematics LD.     

Direct instruction in math word problems: students with learning disabilities

This investigation was conducted to test the effectiveness of strategy teaching and sequencing practice problems in teaching students with learning disabilities to identify the correct algorithm for solving addition and subtraction word problems. Sixty-two students were assigned to one of three experimental groups: strategy plus sequence, strategy only, and sequence only. The results indicated that students in the strategy-plus-sequence group, as well as those in the strategy-only group, scored significantly higher than did students in the sequence-only group. Findings indicated that strategy teaching was the more effective of the two instructional components. Implications are discussed in terms of instructional design for students with learning disabilities.