Abstract. Differences in psycholinguistic processing of written and spoken language, and psycholinguistic deficiencies of poor readers were studied by giving meaningful, anomalous and random word strings to 18 good and 18 poor readers. In both spoken and written conditions the order of recall was meaningful > anomalous > random (p < .001), suggesting that syntactic and semantic demands of spoken and written sentences were similar. Poor readers were inferior to good readers on written presentations (p < .05). The groups were similar on spoken presentations. The reading comprehension deficiency could not be attributed to inadequate psycholinguistic processing, memory or automaticity in decoding. Incomplete decoding during silent reading by poor readers was supported as an explanation.
Literature on deficiencies of poor readers is reviewed and criticized. Based on studies of oral reading errors and instructional effects, the major problem for beginning readers is learning to decode printed words to oral language accurately. Low decoding accuracy persists into secondary school and is derived mainly from inadequate early development of auditory and phonological skills. Poor readers older than about 8 were found to be inferior to good readers in: 1) decoding accuracy, 2) decoding speed, 3) perception of orthographic regularity, 4) segmenting sentences and paragraphs sematically, and 5) constructing meaning at sentence and paragraph levels. Optimal teaching for poor readers should include a substantial commitment of time to directed, well-integrated instruction aimed toward improving all cognitive deficiencies related to reading. Instructional principles should be adapted differently to poor readers at primary and intermediate levels.
Two samples of children with reading difficulties--145 poor readers and 121 dyslexic children--were tested on the British Ability Scales (BAS). The poor readers were classified, using Rutter & Yule's (1975) criteria, into children with specific reading retardation and general reading backwardness. These children's profiles of scores on the BAS were also entered into a cluster analysis which provided some confirmation of the validity of the Rutter & Yule classification. The BAS scores of the dyslexic children were also entered into a cluster analysis. Three groups were identified: 30 with mixed visuo-spatial and linguistic processing problems, 52 with sequential processing problems, and 39 with problems in the holistic retrieval of information. It was concluded that the data lend support to the view that children with specific reading retardation, and dyslexic children in particular, are not homogeneous in their cognitive profiles. Finally, each group identified above was analysed for fit to the Lawson & Inglis (1985) principal components model of learning disability. The fit to the model for most groups was poor. It was concluded that a model which implicates left hemisphere aetiology for all LD children is inadequate. Some benefit, however, is likely to accrue from the more rigorous definition of specific subtypes, and in this endeavour the BAS appear to offer a useful advance in such assessment and identification.
Two samples of children with reading difficulties--145 poor readers whose word reading was one standard deviation or more below the mean and 121 dyslexic children-were tested on the British Ability Scales. The purpose of the investigation was to examine whether they would score relatively poorly on verbal tests and relatively well on non-verbal tests along the lines suggested by Lawson & Inglis (1985). Also the question of sex differences was investigated. The BAS results tended to confirm the Lawson & Inglis finding that (1) children with learning disabilities in general have verbal deficits and show significantly higher performance on non-verbal tasks, and that (2) this tendency is more pronounced in males than in females. The results, although statistically significant, are not totally consistent either within or between samples. The discussion considers possible explanations for the findings and the possibility that different subgroups of these samples might show differential effects.
The thesis is advanced that transformations which lead to nonconservation (as opposed to those that do not) are related connotatively to the concept to be conserved. Evidence was found in significant positive correlations between degree of non-conservation of weight under various transformations and the magnitude of the semantic differential factor loadings of the adjectives which describe the various rransformations on the potency factor on which the weight adjectives, heavy and Light, are also loaded.Of all the transformations that can be performed on an object, why is it that some lead to nonconservation and some to conservation of some property of an object? Why do young children think, for example, that changing a ball's shape changes its weight, while changes in some other equally irrelevant characteristic of the ball do not affect their judgment of .the ball's weight? There is at present no theory of conservation transformations or explanation for what might be called the 'transformation dCcalage' or the fact that the conserva--tion of an object's properties is easier under some transformations than others. Our thesis is that transformations based upon words that are connotations of the label for the concept to be conserved will lead to nonconservation. Moreover, the stronger the connotative relationship between the label for the concept and the label for the transformation the more difficult it will be for the child to conserve that transformation. If the word or concept, heavy, connotes hard, rough, or strong, for example, then transformations that change an object's hardness, roughness, strength, etc., will be expected to be effective conservation of weight transformations. This was the case in the study by Nurnrnedal and Murray (1969). The purpose of this paper was to extend the thesis over a wider variety of transformations that were based upon words that were connotatively and not connotatively related in varying degrees to the words, heavy and light. The measure of the strength of a connotation was simply the absolute magnitude of the factor loading of a word (or pair of words) on a semantic differential factor (Osgood, et al., 1957) on which the adjective pair, heavy-light, was loaded. The notion was that adjective pairs that loaded significantly on the same factor on which 'heavy-light' was loaded were connotatively related to weight and would serve, therefore, as the basis of effective conservation of weight transformations. Word pairs that were not significantly loaded on the factor or loaded on other factors should be unrelated to conservation and transformations upon them should not be seductive.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.