The present study assessed the compensatory effectiveness of four assistive software tools (speech synthesis, spellchecker, homophone tool, and dictionary) on literacy. Secondary- level students (N = 93) with reading difficulties completed computer-based tests of literacy skills. Training on their respective software followed for those assigned to the Assistive Software and the Microsoft Word Control groups. Posttests revealed an improvement for the Assistive Software group on reading comprehension, homophone error detection, spelling error detection, and word meanings. The Microsoft Word Control group also improved on spelling error detection and word meanings, but performed worse on homophone error detection. A Full Control group showed no significant improvements on any of the measures. Overall, results indicate a significant assistive value of the four software tools (from the software package Read & Write Gold, 2002) across several domains of literacy.

Teaching statistics and research methods to psychology undergraduates is a major pedagogic challenge. Knowledge of students' conceptual problems in mathematics is important in the current climate of widening access, a burgeoning interest in psychology, and fears about declining standards of numeracy and other quantitative skills. This study compared the mathematical knowledge of two cohorts of undergraduates who entered psychology a decade apart--one in 1992, the other in 2002. Six broadly defined components of mathematical thinking relevant to the teaching of statistics in psychology were examined--calculation, algebraic reasoning, graphical interpretation, proportionality and ratio, probability and sampling, and estimation. Both cohorts were also compared with a 1984 cohort on a subset of items reported in a study by Greer and Semrau (1984). Results revealed highly significant differences between the two cohorts on all six components, with 1992 students outperforming their 2002 counterparts. Males were also found to perform significantly better than females on a majority of components. Level of qualification in mathematics was found to predict overall performance. Comparison with Greer and Semrau's (1984) sample revealed an alarming decline in performance across the two decades on a selection of test items.

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The present longitudinal study sought to investigate the impact of poor phonology on children's mathematical status. From a screening sample of 256 five‐year‐olds, 82 children were identified as either typically achieving (TA; N=31), having comorbid poor phonology and mathematical difficulties (PDMD; N=31), or having only poor phonology (phonological difficulty, PD; N=20). Children were assessed on eight components of informal and formal mathematics achievement at ages 5–7 years. PD children were found to have significant impairments in some, mainly formal, components of mathematics by age 7 compared to TA children. Analysis also revealed that, by age 7, approximately half of the PD children met the criteria for PDMD, while the remainder exhibited less severe deficits in some components of formal mathematics. Children's mathematical performance at age 5, however, did not predict which PD children were more likely to become PDMD at age 7, nor did they differ in terms of phonological awareness at age 5. However, those PD children who later became PDMD had lower scores on verbal and non‐verbal tests of general ability.

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