This study examines the relationships between phonological awareness, visualspatial sketchpad (VSSP) functioning and arithmetic attainment in young children. A sample of 42 children had their VSSP functioning and phonological awareness assessed when they were 5 years old. Approximately 12 months later their nonverbal reasoning, vocabulary, arithmetic, and reading attainment were assessed. Together, VSSP functioning, phonological awareness, vocabulary, and nonverbal reasoning predicted 41% of the variation in the children's arithmetic attainment. Only phonological awareness and VSSP functioning were significant independent predictors. In contrast, only phonological awareness was a significant independent predictor of reading attainment. These findings are consistent with phonological awareness influencing both the development of reading and arithmetic, whilst VSSP functioning only impacts on arithmetic development.When children solve arithmetic problems they must generate and store either nonverbal or verbal representations of the quantities. Huttenlocher, Jordan, and Levine (1994) proposed that very young children use nonverbal mental models. Rasmussen and Bisanz (2005) further developed this proposal, arguing that young children's mental representations of quantities consist of a visual array of tokens that can be manipulated to perform arithmetic operations. They hypothesised that these visual representations are stored in the visual-spatial sketchpad (VSSP). Rasmussen and Bisanz suggest that as children progress through school they increasingly use verbal representations of quantities (i.e., number words), which are phonologically coded and can Correspondence should be addressed to Fiona Simmons,

Identifying dyslexia in adulthood presents particular challenges because of complicating factors such as acquisition of compensatory strategies, differing degrees of intervention and the problem of distinguishing dyslexic adults from those whose literacy difficulties have non-cognitive causes. One of the implications is that conventional literacy measures, per se, do not provide a satisfactory basis for screening for dyslexia in adulthood as some dyslexic adults have above-average literacy skills and some non-dyslexic adults have very poor literacy skills. This study examined an alternative approach to dyslexia screening, using three tests that depend heavily on phonological processing, lexical access and working memory, but which are not conventional measures of literacy. Using these tests, which are computer delivered, 70 dyslexic adults from three different types of educational institution were compared with 69 non-dyslexic adults from the same institutions. The results showed that the dyslexic and non-dyslexic groups were significantly different on all three computer-based tests, with an average effect size of 1.55. Adaptive versions of these tests were then created to reduce overall administration time for the suite to about 15 minutes. Analysis showed that the combined scaled scores from the adaptive versions of the three tests significantly discriminated the dyslexic from the non-dyslexic group with an increased effect size of 2.07 and with a sensitivity rate of 90.6% and a specificity rate of 90.0%. It was concluded that this approach is a valid and useful method of identifying dyslexia in adulthood, which, given the ease of administration to large numbers of adults, has noted advantages for education and employment.

This paper reports on a longitudinal study using the computer-based cognitive assessment system CoPS, and considers the applicability of this system in the early identification of cognitive strengths and limitations that affect the development of reading. CoPS comprises eight tests of basic cognitive abilities, including phonological awareness, auditory discrimination, and short-term visual and auditoryverbal memory. A total of 421 children participated in the study. Assessment with the CoPS tests was carried out at age 5 years, and follow-up assessments using conventional tests of reading and general ability were carried out at 6 and 8 years of age.Correlations between the CoPS tests administered at age 5 and reading ability at age 8 were in the region of 0.6 for auditory-verbal memory and phonological awareness, and in the region of 0.3 for the CoPS measure of auditory discrimination as well as most of the other memory measures. Stepwise linear regression analyses showed that the CoPS tests of auditory-verbal memory and phonological awareness administered at age 5 together accounted for 50% of the variance in reading ability at age 8, compared with only 29% of the variance being attributable to intelligence. It was concluded that short-term memory is an important predictor variable for reading, in addition to the more generally acknowledged variable of phonological processing.Discriminant function analysis showed that CoPS tests provide a highly satisfactory prediction of poor reading skills, with very low or zero rates for false positives and false negatives. By contrast, a word recognition test given at age 6 was not found to predict reading at age 8 to the same degree of accuracy, resulting in an unsatisfactory false positive rate of 21%. Measures of verbal and nonverbal ability at age 6 produced unacceptably high false positive rates between 50% and 70%. These findings are discussed in relation to the prediction of children at risk of reading failure. The potential of computer-based cognitive profiling for facilitating differentiated teaching in early reading is also considered.

Research has demonstrated girls to outperform boys on conventional literacy tests. The present studies concern gender differences on computerised educational tests. Seventy-one children were tested using LASS Secondary and a set of seven conventional measures. No significant gender differences were found on any of the LASS Secondary modules, although females did outperform males on a conventional spelling test. A further 126 pupils were tested on computerised and paper versions of the LASS Secondary reading, spelling and reasoning modules. No gender differences were found on the computerised versions, but there were significant differences on the paper versions of the reading and spelling modules favouring females. In a third study, 45 children were administered computerised and paper versions of the LASS Junior reading and spelling modules. There were no significant differences on the computerised modules, but girls performed significantly higher than boys on the paper version of the spelling module. It is possible that computerised assessment does not detect the established gender effect due to differences between males and females in motivation, computer experience and competitiveness. Further large-scale studies are necessary to confirm these findings.

In a study using the literacy module from CoPS Baseline, a computerised assessment system, 153 children were assessed at an average age of 4 years 10 months, and progress in reading was followed up 12 months later. The results indicated that the computerised baseline assessment module produced a satisfactory distribution of scores across the intended age range, and the shorter adaptive form of the baseline test correlated highly (r = 0.81) with the full form. Baseline scores gave a good overall prediction of reading development over the first year of schooling (r = 0.74), regardless of the child's age. Correlations between the 8 skill/concept areas that comprise the baseline assessment and reading ability 12 months later were consistent with other findings reported in the literature. It was concluded that the objectivity that characterises computerised assessment could provide a more consistent and dependable approach to baseline assessment.