Teachers' perceptions of criteria for identifying learning disabled students

A national sample of 118 teachers of learning disabled (LD) students described their school districts' criteria for identifying LD students and indicated their agreement or disagreement with the criteria. Reported criteria were characterized by variability, even within states, as were the teachers' stated agreement or disagreement with them. Implications of the continuing definitional crisis in the area of learning disabilities are explored.     

Construct validity of the Kaufman assessment battery for children with learning disabled and mentally retarded

This study investigated the construct validity of the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC) via correlational procedures with the WISC-R. Thirty-two special population children selected from kindergarten through grade five participated in the study; 19 children were diagnosed as learning disabled, 13 as educable mentally retarded. A high relationship between the WISC-R FSIQ and the K-ABC Mental Processing composite revealed evidence of construct validity in the measurement of intelligence. The K-ABC diagnosed the learning disabled but failed to diagnose the mentally retarded children. The K-ABC Sequential Processing Scale appeared to offer a unique construct (analytic, temporal sequencing) not measured by the WISC-R. Implications for the usefulness of the K-ABC are discussed.     

A survey of state-level contacts for school psychology regarding retention/promotion practices: Are we evaluating the risks and benefits?

In 1987, state-level contacts were surveyed concerning retention/promotion policies and the role of the school psychologist in retention/promotion decisions within their states. The intent of the survey was to ascertain specific state policies, compile information concerning the number of students retained at specific grade levels, and compare the individual views of state-level contacts/consultants on the actual and ideal roles of the school psychologist. Results of the survey are presented and implications are discussed.     

Letter Processing and the Formation of Memory Representations in Children with Naming Speed Deficits

The ability to recognize letter patterns within words as a single unit is important for fluent reading. This skill is based on previously established memory representations of common letter patterns. The ability to form these memory representations may be impaired in some poor readers, particularly readers with naming speed deficits (NSD). This study explored factors that influence letter processing and the subsequent formation of memory representations of letter strings in children with and without a NSD. Children were presented with a letter string, followed by a probe unit that was either a single letter, a two-letter cluster, or a repetition of the whole string. Children indicated whether or not the probe had been present in the preceding string. Two factors were manipulated: (a) amount of time to process the initial letter string, and (b) level of orthographic structure present in the letter string. Results indicated that overall, children with NSD performed less accurately than children without NSD. However, children with NSD showed no differential benefit in performance as a result of longer time to process a letter string. In addition, all readers were able to make use of the orthographic structure in a letter string to aid performance. Implications of results for establishing memory representations of letter strings are discussed.     

L.A. Stories: Aggression in Preschoolers' Spontaneous Narratives after the Riots of 1992

64 inner-city preschoolers' spontaneous story narratives that were examined directly after the Los Angeles riots of 1992 were compared with narratives told by a matched comparison group of 128 children living in other U.S. cities who had no direct exposure to the riots. Narratives were coded for length, complexity, overall thematic content, character behavior in the stories, number of aggressive words, and story outcome. Children were given language and pre-academic skill assessments, their classroom behavior was observed, and teachers rated children's social competence. Results indicated that there were significant group differences in the story narratives. Children who were directly exposed to the riots told more narratives with aggressive thematic content, aggressive words, unfriendly figures who engaged in physical aggression, and mastery of situations with aggression than did the comparison group of children who had no direct exposure to the riots. The findings suggest that children's narratives reflected their exposure to the violence and their expression of that experience.     

Letter Names and Alphabet Book Reading by Senior Kindergarteners: An Eye Movement Study

The study monitored the eye movements of twenty 5‐year‐old children while reading an alphabet book to examine the manner in which the letters, words, and pictures were fixated and the relation of attention to print to alphabetic knowledge. Children attended little to the print, took longer to first fixate print than illustrations, and labeled fewer letters than when presented with letters in isolation. After controlling for receptive vocabulary, regressions revealed that children knowing more letters were quicker to look at the featured letter on a page and spent more time looking at the featured letter, the word, and its first letter. Thus, alphabet books along with letter knowledge may facilitate entrance into the partial alphabetic stage of word recognition.