WISC-R subtest differences for male and female LD children and youth

Abstract

Investigated the performance on the WISC-R of 98 learning disabled children and youth (69 males/29 females), who ranged in age from 6-3 to 13-6 to determine whether there were any significant subtest scale score differences between sexes. A 2 X 10 analysis of variance was used to analyze these data.Differences between the individual subtest means were analyzed b using Newman Keuls test for simple effects. Results indicated that males ottained higher (but not significant) scores on the six verbal subtests. Females scored significantly higher on coding than did their counterparts. In addition, the Verbal vs. Performance I& dichotomy did not ap ear as useful evidence in the diagnosis of learning disabilities. Evidence Prom the investigation did not indicate that B significant interaction effect existed between sexw and WISC-R subtest scores.

Personal Narratives of Students With and Without Learning Disabilities

“…Rather, the unique narrative performance of girls with LD may be accounted for by several linguistic, cognitive, and academic characteristics of these girls documented in both the previous research and the present study. First, girls with LD have been found to demonstrate verbal skills inferior to those of boys with LD (e.g., Eno & Woehlke, 1980;Ryckman, 1981;Vance, Singer, & Engin, 1980). Consistent with this suggestion, girls with LD in this study, as compared to boys with LD, displayed significantly less-developed expressive semantic abilities (see "Participants' Structural Language Skills" section, above), were more likely to have deficits in processing auditory information (71 percent of girls; 47 percent of boys), and demonstrated less overall verbal productiv-ity during the conversational narrating (see "Procedure" section, above).…”

Learning disabilities and intelligence test results: A model based on a principal components analysis of the WISC‐R

“…We must, however, again acknowledge that the data provided by Vance et al (1980) are not in accord with this expectation. It would therefore seem desirable to secure an estimate of the more general effect of sex over a wider range of studies.…”

Interpreting low scores on the WISC—R Third Factor: It's more than distractibility.

“…Finally, several studies have found sex differences related to the WISC–R Third Factor. Vance, Singer, and Engin (1980) found that learning disabled girls obtained significantly higher Coding scale scores than learning disabled boys, whereas Hodges, Horwitz, Kline, and Brandt (1982) found that girls obtained higher Third Factor scores than boys. Furthermore, Clampit and Silver (1989) reported that boys with low Third Factor scores outnumbered girls by a ratio of three to one in the WISC–R standardization data.…”