The Use of English Morphology by High-Risk and Learning Disabled Children

Abstract

The present study examined the relationship between performance on tests of auditory and visual perception and learning rate in reading lessons. Subjects were 69 children with severe dyslexia (2-5 years below grade level) who participated in a standard tutorial program designed along behavior therapy lines. Prior to placement in the tutorial reading program, children were tested with the Wide Range Achievement Test, the Bender -Gestalt, the Raven, a test of auditory-visual integration, and a test of visual-spatial perception. Learning rates were determined for 42 children. Significant correlations were found among the psychometric tests but not between psychometric tests and learning rate. Children achieving above and below expectancy in tutoring differed significantly in learning rate and amount of gain over 6 months but not on any of the psychometric tests. It was concluded that perceptual deficiencies may be more frequent in disabled readers, but learning rate and achievement are not related to the degree of perceptual deficiency.How important are psychometric test profiles in distinguishing differences in learning ability? Studies of visual-motor functioning, auditory perception, and auditory-visual integration have usually shown inferior performance in children with reading disability as compared to normal readers (Bateman 1966). Because of the regularity with which such deficiencies have been described, they have been implicated both as causal factors in reading disability and as variables which should interfere with learning.Educators presenting an opposing view, such as Bateman (1969) and Cohen (1969), have pointed out that perceptual deficiencies may indeed be present but are often unimportant for learning. Cohen (1969), for example, has said:To put it succinctly, on the basis of present data, I would play the visual-perceptual game if I were in the visual-perception or the IQ business. But, in the reading field, the surest way to get urban ghetto kids to read is to teach them letters and words and to do it thoroughly, (p. 503] Although Cohen was referring to ghetto children, Burks (1968) has noted that many feel the same is true with respect to other children as well.One type of evidence which could contribute to resolving this question would be to determine what relationship, if any, exists between various psychometric test results and learning in a standard situation. Thus, if learning varies as a function of perceptual or sensory integrating ability, there should be a high

Relations Between Dialect Variation, Grammar, and Early Spelling Skills

“…Both traditional theories of spelling development and research investigations suggest that typically-developing children learn to represent inflections correctly and consistently by third grade (age 8 or 9), in conjunction with increasing reading skill, grammatical and orthographic knowledge, and classroom instruction (Beers & Beers, 1992;Ehri, 1997;Gentry, 1982;Henderson, 1981;Nunes, Bryant, & Bindman, 1997;Read, 1986;Rubin, 1988). Further, children with oral language and learning disorders seem to have specific difficulties in processing inflections, which is most evident in their omission of these morphemes in both speech and writing (Carlisle, 1996;Johnson & Grant, 1989;Hauerwas & Walker, 2003;Vogel, 1983;Wiig, Semel, & Crouse, 1973;Windsor, Scott, & Street, 2000).…”

The Processing of Inflectional Morphology: A Comparison of Children with and without Dyslexia

“…Many studies show dyslexic children are poorer on spoken tasks of inflectional morphology compared to children of the same age (Brittain, 1970;Bryant et al, 1998;Doehring, Trites, Paterl & Fiedorowicz, 1981;Egan & Tainturier, 2003;Joanisse, Manis, Keating & Seidenberg, 2000;Vogel, 1983;Wiig, Semel & Crouse, 1973;though see Smith-Lock, 1991, for a null result). However, these impairments could be attributed to their poorer literacy skills; initial difficulties with reading reduces exposure to morphologically complex words in print, which could in turn affect the development of dyslexic children's morphological awareness in spoken language (Bryant et al, 1998;Fowler & Liberman, 1995).…”

The performance of reading disabled 3rd to 6th graders on the Token test for children

“…The literature reports that reading disabled children use less complex grammatical structures than normal readers and often have difficulty with morphological markers such as possessives, verb tense or plurals (Wiig, Semel and Crouse, 1973;Vogel, 1975). However, the results indicated that the normal readers also frequently missed this item.…”

“…In their expressive language, reading disabled children tend to use less complex utterances and types of grammatical structures (Fry, Johnson, Muehl, 1970). In addition, they also have difficulty in using morphological markers that indicate the possessive, verb tense or plural forms (Wiig, Semel and Crouse, 1973). In their receptive language abilities, reading disabled children have difficulty comprehending complex syntactic structures (Menyuk and Looney, 1972).…”