All empires fall,you just have to know where to push: Antecedent issues for a study of learning difficulties in Australia

Abstract

A subset of the corpus of gifted students who have learning difficulties are those who have specific literacy disabilities; gifted literacy disabled (GLitD) students. Estimates suggest that approximately 10 per cent gifted read at a level of two or more years below their expected grade level. Surprisingly then, these students have attracted comparatively little past research interest.

The present investigation examined the reading characteristics of a group of 37 primary level GLitD students aged between 78 and 121 months. These students displayed a discrepancy in literacy perfor‐mance of at least 1 standard deviation below the mean for their chronological age in at least one of reading prose accuracy, prose reading com‐prehension or isolated word reading accuracy. As well, their spelling and phonemic awareness (segmentation and blending) were assessed. Scores on the cognitive factors of the W1SC‐III identified two groups: a group of 20 students with superior performance (at least 130 points) on both Verbal Comprehension and Perceptual Organisation (the ‘superior VC + PO’ group) and a group of 17 students with superior performance only on Perceptual Organisation (the ‘superior PO’ group).

The two groups differed in the literacy patterns displayed. The superior PO group showed the greater level of difficulty, with all measures of literacy at least one standard deviation below their expected score. The superior VC + PO group showed lower performance on isolated word reading and spelling. They did not differ in phonemic awareness.

The literacy disability displayed by both groups is attributed to a specific preference for the use of global rather than analytic information processing strategies. This in turn influences phonemic awareness knowledge and consequently orthographic knowledge. The superior VC + PO group are more able to compensate for this cognitive disability.

The implications of this study for the diagnosis and instruction of GLitD students are discussed.