1/5. A school-aged child with delayed reading skills.During a health supervision visit, the father of a 7.5-year-old African American second-grader asked about his son's progress in reading. He was concerned when, at a recent teacher-parent conference to review Darren's progress, the teacher remarked that Darren was not keeping up with reading skills compared with others in his class. She said that he had difficulty sounding out some words correctly. In addition, he could not recall words he had read the day before. The teacher commented that Darren was a gregarious, friendly child with better-than-average verbal communication skills. His achievement at math was age-appropriate; spelling, however, was difficult for Darren, with many deleted letters and reversals of written letters. A focused history did not reveal any risk factors for a learning problem in the prenatal or perinatal periods. Early motor, language, and social milestones were achieved on time. Darren had not experienced any head injury, loss of consciousness, or chronic medical illness. He had several friends, and his father denied any behavioral problems at home or at school. His teacher completed a DSM-IV-specific behavioral survey for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). It did not show any evidence of ADHD. Darren's father completed 1 year of college and is currently the manager of a neighborhood convenience store. His mother had a high school education; she recalled that she found it difficult to complete assignments that required reading or writing. She is employed as a waitress. Darren does not have any siblings. The pediatrician performed a complete physical examination, the results of which were normal, including visual acuity, audiometry, and a neurological examination. It was noted that Darren seemed to pause several times in response to questions or commands. On two occasions, during finger-nose testing and a request to assess tandem gait, directions required repetition. overall, he was pleasant and seemed to enjoy the visit. His pediatrician concluded that he had a learning problem but she was uncertain about the next step. She asked herself, "Is there anything else I can do in the office to evaluate Darren's problem with learning? Should I quickly refer him for educational testing or encourage a reading tutor? What questions can I ask his teacher that would be helpful? Am I missing a medical disorder?"- - - - - - - - - - ranking = 1keywords = achievement (Clic here for more details about this article) |
2/5. Neuroanatomical and behavioral asymmetry in an adult compensated dyslexic.Individual differences in cortical anatomy are readily observable, but their functional significance for behaviors such as reading is not well understood. Here, we report a case of an apparent compensated dyslexic who had attained high achievement in visuospatial mathematics. Data from a detailed background interview, psychometric testing, divided visual field tasks measuring basic word recognition (word naming, nonword naming, and lexical decision), and more controlled word retrieval (verb, category, and rhyme generation), and measurements of his atypical brain structure are described. The findings suggested that enhanced "top-down" processing could provide the means to compensate for deficient "bottom-up" word decoding skills in this case. Relative to controls, this individual also evidenced unusually large asymmetries on several divided visual field lexical tasks, an extreme leftward asymmetry of the planum temporale, and a rare form of Sylvian fissure morphology (Steinmetz type 4, [Steinmetz, H., Ebeling, U., Huang, Y., & Kahn, T. (1990). Sulcus topography of the parietal opercular region: An anatomic and MR study. brain and Language, 38, 515-533.]). We suggest that certain forms of brain organization may be associated with successful behavioral compensation for dyslexia, and that anatomical variations in the right hemisphere may be important contributors to individual differences in reading acquisition and achievement.- - - - - - - - - - ranking = 2keywords = achievement (Clic here for more details about this article) |
3/5. Development of children with early language delay.Four children with early language delays (ELD) were compared to a control group of 12 children with respect to their preschool language abilities from age 2 1/2 to 5 years and their verbal skills at the end of Grade 2. The language-delayed children each initially showed severe and broad impairments in syntactic, phonological, and lexical production. Over time, their deficits became milder and more selective, such that normal or nearly normal speech and language proficiency was exhibited by age 60 months. Nevertheless, when followed up 3 years later, three of the four cases were severely reading disabled. These findings are discussed with respect to prior findings and hypotheses about the sequelae of early language delay and the relationship of language development to reading achievement.- - - - - - - - - - ranking = 1keywords = achievement (Clic here for more details about this article) |
4/5. reading disability: a discussion of visual, auditory, and linguistic factors.A case is presented in which the chief complaint of letter reversals and poor reading achievement suggests a visual or visual-perceptual problem. Analysis of the history, refraction, visual skills, and visual-perceptual test results indicates that a visual system dysfunction is not a significant factor in this case. Rather, a linguistic skills deficit is suggested by the pattern of errors exhibited on the tests. The influence of linguistic skills on several commonly used visual tests is discussed.- - - - - - - - - - ranking = 1keywords = achievement (Clic here for more details about this article) |
5/5. The impact of phonemic processing instruction on the reading achievement of reading-disabled children.It is hypothesized that a phonemic processing deficit is a primary causal factor in the reading problems of many children with developmental dyslexia. An instructional model which emphasizes phonics instruction as a key in the treatment of children with reading disorders is presented. Procedures for the application of this model in a parent-involvement clinic program are described. Results from two typical children from the clinic sample who had received treatment for more than a year are presented. One Fourth-Grade child, who began the program with a 1 1/2-year reading deficit, was reading grade-appropriate material and scoring about 1 year above grade-norms on a standardized test after 14 months of clinic treatment. The second child began the treatment program as a Sixth Grader who was virtually a non-reader. After 1 1/2 years of intervention, this child had attained a Third-Grade reading level, but was still nearly 4 years behind in reading. The pretest error responses to individual words made by both children are reviewed to demonstrate the underlying phonetic deficiency--an apparent difficulty with vowel sound correspondence. Averaged reading achievement results from 13 children who had received 3 months of instruction in an experimental study in which the instructional model is being used are presented. Results indicate a dramatic change in the children's rate of reading achievement during treatment. The children were divided into three groups on the basis of a measure of the transfer of phonic skills: normal transfer, poor transfer which improved dramatically in the first 3 months of treatment, and poor transfer which failed to improve. Analysis of the achievement data of these three groups indicates that the second group improved more rapidly than did the other two groups. It is suggested that further analyses of phonic transfer data may prove to be very instructive concerning the causes and treatment of developmental dyslexia.- - - - - - - - - - ranking = 7keywords = achievement (Clic here for more details about this article) |