A Further Study of Some Cognitive and Other Disabilities in Backward Readers of Average Non‐verbal Reasoning Scores

Abstract

Summary. The application of the Watts‐Vernon Reading Test and a Non‐Verbal Reasoning Test to the whole of the fourth year pupils in fourteen secondary modern schools gave 426 pupils with a reading quotient <80; of these 204 had standardised non‐verbal reasoning scores ≥90. Thirty backward boys and twenty‐five backward girls, all of whom had non‐verbal reasoning scores ≥90, were paired, individually, with average to good readers, matched for non‐verbal score, social class, sex and school. The groups undertook a number of individual tests. The boys who were backward had a poorer performance on certain tests compared with non‐backward boys, and a greatly inferior performance to backward girls on the tests of copying and dictation.

An Examination of Methods Used to Test the Visual Perceptual Deficit Hypothesis of Dyslexia

“…Although some investigators report positive findings, there is no test that reliably differentiates between the Volume 12, 'Number 10, December 1979 performances of normal and reading-impaired children (see the conflicting findings regarding the Bender-Gestalt Test in Fabian 1945, Nielson & Ringe 1969, Symmes & Rapaport 1972, Lovell, Gray, & Oliver 1964, McManis, Figley, Richert, & Fabre 1978. Divergent findings may be due to differences in sampling the population of reading-disabled children across studies, an issue to be dealt with later in this paper.…”

Dyslexia and Dysgraphia

“…For example, children in this age range who are better at suppressing associated movements (e.g., symmetrical or mirror-image movements of the hands) also do better academically (Blondis, Snow, & Accardo, 1990;Wolff, Gunnoe, & Cohen, 1985). Furthermore, such inhibitory control also correlates with superior performance in disembedding figures (Todor & Lazarus, 1986), a task that is analogous to disentangling lines on the JLOT (Mehta & Newcombe, 1991), is poorly performed by individuals with reading impairment (Elkind, Larson, & van Doorninck, 1965;Lovell, Gray, & Oliver, 1964), and involves independent contributions from both cerebral hemispheres for best results (Russo & Vignolo, 1967;E. Zaidel, 1973).…”