Previous research used a picture-word interference task to show that skilled and less skilled comprehenders in the third and fifth grades could retrieve the meaning of primer-level words equally well. With a similar task and comparable groups of children, this study assessed the relationship between word difficulty and semantic access by using both the easy words and a new set of more difficult words. Retrieval of the meaning of these difficult words was least apparent for the less skilled third graders, the group that had the most difficulty decoding these words. These results indicate that decoding ease and extraction of word meanings are related and also suggest that decoding ability must be considered a factor in reading comprehension.The authors appreciate the assistance of Mary Wolfe for analyzing the data and the cooperation of George Schell, principal, and the teachers of the
Since the passage of Public Law 94-142, The Education for All Handicapped Children Act, preparing pre-service teacher education students to work with exceptional children in the classroom has become an increasing concern. A study by Vacc (1978) of the training of classroom teachers regarding exceptionalities indicated that only 34 percent of the elementary education and 24 percent of the secondary education teacher training programs surveyed required a specific course such as "Psychology of Exceptional Children." When these specific courses are not required, information concerning exceptional children may be included in existing courses, such as those in educational psychology or the psychological foundations of education.Typically, instructors teaching about exceptionalities concentrate on the acceptance of persons with disabilities. To promote greater understanding and acceptance of exceptional individuals, field trips to agencies providing services for handicapped children are arranged, or students are required to provide direct services for such children. Unfortunately, although these activities are worthwhile, they are time consuming and difficult to schedule effectively as part of a psychological foundations course that encompasses multiple dimensions of psychology related to teaching. The more topics included in an educational psychology course, the less time is available for adequate coverage of any one of them.Instructional Method. Our solution to the dual problems of providing information about exceptionalities and helping to develop more open-m~nded attitudes toward handicapped students w~thin such constraints was to assign students self-study mater~als cons~sting of abr~dged didactic Informatlon concerning baslc aspects of exceptional~ties, accompan~e d by written exercises almed at fostering accepting attitudes toward exceptional chlldren The use of these two types of self-~nstruct~onal materials provided pre-service teachers with ~nslght and information concerning exceptionalities wlthout allocating large blocks of course time or mak~ng major changes in the curr~culum Examples of the selected abridged materials are Exceptlonal Ch~ldren ln Focus by Payne, Kaufman, Brown, and DeMott, and The Except~onal Ch~ld A Pr~mer, by Schwartz Such dldactic material provrded sufficient information for the students to become involved in the attltudinal exercises Llmited class tlme could then be centered on the affective concerns rather than on the presentation of background information. The importance of such an attitudinal focus was illustrated by Vacc and Kirst (1977), who stressed the need for classroom teachers to gain additional training for working with handicapped children and more open-minded attitudes toward them.Presented below are two of the nine attitudinal exercises included in the course. The first was included in the introductory section on exceptionalities and the second was part of the section concerning hearing disabled children.
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