Test of the definition of learning disability based on the difference between IQ and achievement

A learning disability is commonly defined as a discrepancy between IQ and achievement. This has been criticized for identifying too many children as having a learning disability who have high IQs and average academic achievement. Such overidentification as actually occurred was assessed in 473 referred children (8-16 years, M= 10, SD=2) with normal intelligence. Learning disability was defined as a significant discrepancy (p<.05) between predicted and obtained achievement in reading, mathematics, or written expression on the Wechsler Individual Achievement Test. Predicted achievement was based on the child's WISC-III Full Scale IQ. Overidentification was considered to occur when a child scored at or above age level in reading, mathematics, and writing but still had a significant discrepancy between predicted and obtained achievement by virtue of a high IQ. Learning disability was diagnosed in 312 (66%) of the children. There was no overidentification because all children had one or more WIAT scores below the normative level for their age, i.e., < 100. Further, only 7% of the children were identified with a learning disability based on a WIAT score in the 90s. These children had a mean IQ of 123 and were rated by their teachers and parents as having learning problems.     

Phonemic analysis and severe reading disability in children

Forty-five first-grade children of average intellectual ability were studied, consisting of one group of average readers, one group with mild reading difficulty, and one group with severe reading disability. A striking deficit in phonemic analysis was observed in children with severe reading disability. These children were unable to segment spoken syllables into individual speech sounds, while children with only mild reading difficulty or none were quite proficient at this skill. In fact, using phonemic analysis scores, it was possible to distinguish the severe reading disability group from the others with perfect accuracy.This research was supported in part by U.S. Public Health Service, Maternal and Child Health Project 916, and by Grants HD-03110 and ES-01104 from the National Institutes of Health.     

中文阅读中无关言语效应的认知机制探究：眼动证据

采用眼动追踪技术探讨中文阅读中无关言语效应的影响机制, 操纵了背景音的类型(有意义背景音、无意义背景音、无声), 通过3个实验考察其对简单句、复杂句、篇章阅读的影响。结果发现, 被试在无意义背景音条件下加工三类阅读材料时的眼动指标与无声条件相比差异均不显著; 但是, 在有意义背景音条件下, 被试在进行复杂句和篇章阅读时的眼动指标与无声条件相比差异显著, 而在简单句阅读中差异不显著。结果表明, 语义属性才是影响无关言语效应产生的关键因素, 其所起作用受到阅读任务难度的调节, 而对阅读过程的影响主要体现在晚期的词汇加工和语义整合阶段, 本研究结果支持了语义干扰假说。     

Parents' reactions to finding out that their children have average or above average IQ scores

The parents of 41 children who had been given an individually-administered intelligence test were contacted approximately 19 months after testing. The sample included 20 parents who had learned their child had an Average IQ (children'smeanIQ = 100.8) and 21 parents who had learned their child had an Above Average IQ (children'smeanIQ = 130.0). Parents of Average IQ children were less accurate in their memory of test results, and they and their children experienced fewer positive consequences from IQ testing than Above Average children and their parents. Children with Above Average IQ experienced extremely low frequencies of sibling rivalry, conceit or pressure, and they and their parents experienced increased pride and/or self-confidence as a result of the IQ testing. The results as a whole suggest that parents of Average IQ children may need more psychological support during the parent informing process than parents of Above Average IQ children.     

Evidence that nonconscious processes are sufficient to produce false memories

Are nonconscious processes sufficient to cause false memories of a nonstudied event? To investigate this issue, we controlled and measured conscious processing in the DRM task, in which studying associates (e.g., bed, rest, awake...) causes false memories of nonstudied associates (e.g., sleep). During the study phase, subjects studied visually masked associates at extremely rapid rates, followed by immediate recall. After this initial phase, nonstudied test words were rapidly presented for perceptual identification, followed by recognition memory judgments. On the perceptual identification task, we found significant priming of nonstudied associates, relative to control words. We also found significant false recognition of these nonstudied associates, even when subjects did not recall this word at study or identify it at test, indicating that nonconscious processes can cause false recognition. These recognition effects were found immediately after studying each list of associates, but not on a delayed test that occurred after the presentation of several intervening lists. Nonconscious processes are sufficient to cause this memory illusion on immediate tests, but may be insufficient for more vivid and lasting false memories.     

Evidence that judgments of learning are causally related to study choice

Three experiments investigated whether study choice was directly related to judgments of learning (JOLs) by examining people’s choices in cases in which JOLs were dissociated from recall. In Experiment 1, items were given either three repetitions or one repetition on Trial 1. Items given three repetitions received one on Trial 2, and those given one repetition received three on Trial 2—equating performance at the end of Trial 2, but yielding different immediate Trial 2 JOLs. Study choice followed the “illusory” JOLs. A delayed JOL condition in Experiment 2 did not show this JOL bias and neither did study choice. Finally, using a paradigm (Koriat & Bjork, 2005) in which similar JOLs are given to forward and backward associative pairs, despite much worse performance on the backward pairs, study choice again followed the mistaken JOLs. We concluded that JOLs—what people believe they know—directly influence people’s study choices.     

Seemingly anomalous full scale IQ scores on the WAIS-III and the WISC-III

The Canadian and American WISC-III and the American WAIS-III standardization data were used to investigate the prevalence of “seemingly anomalous” Full Scale IQ (FSIQ) scores for all possible Verbal and Performance sums of scale score combinations. It was found that 6% of FSIQ scores in these three samples were seemingly anomalous (i.e., fell outside of their associated VIQ/PIQ intervals). Interestingly, the anomalous FSIQ scores were more prevalent at the extremes of the FSIQ distribution, and did not occur when the VIQ/PIQ interval was greater than 12. Additionally, anomalous FSIQ scores were generally further from the center of the FSIQ distribution than were the associated VIQ and PIQ scores. Also, when the VIQ/PIQ interval contained FSIQ (the non-anomalous case), FSIQ tended to be located distally in the half-segment of the VIQ/PIQ interval furthest from the center of the FSIQ distribution. A statistical explanation for the findings is provided. Portions of this paper were presented March 3, 2000 at the 14th Annual Joseph R. Royce Research Conference, Department of Psychology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta. An erratum to this article is available at .     

Seemingly anomalous full scale IQ scores on the WAIS-III and the WISC-III

The Canadian and American WISC-III and the American WAIS-III standardization data were used to investigate the prevalence of “seemingly anomalous” Full Scale IQ (FSIQ) scores for all possible Verbal and Performance sums of scale score combinations. It was found that 6% of FSIQ scores in these three samples were seemingly anomalous (i.e., fell outside of their associated VIQ/PIQ intervals). Interestingly, the anomalous FSIQ scores were more prevalent at the extremes of the FSIQ distribution, and did not occur when the VIQ/PIQ interval was greater than 12. Additionally, anomalous FSIQ scores were generally further from the center of the FSIQ distribution than were the associated VIQ and PIQ scores. Also, when the VIQ/PIQ interval contained FSIQ (the non-anomalous case), FSIQ tended to be located distally in the half-segment of the VIQ/PIQ interval furthest from the center of the FSIQ distribution. A statistical explanation for the findings is provided. Portions of this paper were presented March 3, 2000 at the 14th Annual Joseph R. Royce Research Conference, Department of Psychology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta. An erratum to this article is available at .     

Stress reduces attention to irrelevant information: Evidence from the Stroop task

Stroop interference can be reduced by stress, and this has been taken as evidence that stress decreases the attention paid to irrelevant information, a theory known as ‘Easterbrook’s hypothesis’. This contradicts more recent theories, which state that attentional control deteriorates in stress. Fifty-five participants undertook a Stroop task under high stress (loud white noise) and low stress conditions. Attention to the irrelevant word information was assessed by manipulating the proportion of congruent trials (e.g. the word RED in the colour red); it is known that Stroop interference increases when many such trials are presented. This effect was reduced when participants were stressed, which is evidence that stress does indeed reduce attention to irrelevant information. This pattern of results was not present in participants with low working memory spans, presumably because these participants had less attentional control. These findings highlight an important weakness in contemporary theories of cognition in stress.     

Functional neuroimaging studies of reading and reading disability (developmental dyslexia)

Converging evidence from a number of neuroimaging studies, including our own, suggest that fluent word identification in reading is related to the functional integrity of two consolidated left hemisphere (LH) posterior systems: a dorsal (temporo-parietal) circuit and a ventral (occipito-temporal) circuit. This posterior system is functionally disrupted in developmental dyslexia. Reading disabled readers, relative to nonimpaired readers, demonstrate heightened reliance on both inferior frontal and right hemisphere posterior regions, presumably in compensation for the LH posterior difficulties. We propose a neurobiological account suggesting that for normally developing readers the dorsal circuit predominates at first, and is associated with analytic processing necessary for learning to integrate orthographic features with phonological and lexical-semantic features of printed words. The ventral circuit constitutes a fast, late-developing, word identification system which underlies fluent word recognition in skilled readers.     

Machine definition of ongoing silent and oral reading rate

A procedure is described by which a machine defines the ongoing silent and oral reading rates, and thus subjects them to environmental control and experimental analysis. Reading is considered as a form of monitoring in which response sequences are linear and successive. Applications for other types of monitoring are considered.

A page is projected on a screen, and the subject is required to read, aloud or silently. Through the same optical system, an opaque loop is presented that masks the projection, and a transparent slit on the opaque loop exposes part of a line of type. With each frame, the slit moves linearly and sequentially, exposing successive reading material. Recycling the loop triggers the presentation of another page. The subject controls the loop by pressing a micro-switch to advance the frame, thereby explicitly defining a monitoring response. The procedure is sensitive to variables such as signal-noise ratio, item difficulty, transient and long-term effects, reinforcement schedules (pay-offs), and age. Monitoring rates are extremely steady, suggesting their use as a base line.

Procedures are suggested for training subjects to be differentially attentive to different parts of a complex display.

     

Effects of the difference between self and coactor scores upon the audit responses that allow access to these scores

An audit response allows access to an existing score from a subject's own performance (self audit) or from his coactor's performance (coactor audit). A previous study found that social stimuli (coactor present) increased audits relative to a non-social (no coactor) condition. The increase, designated a social-stimulus effect, was found to be due more to the coactor's score than to his mere presence. This finding suggested that the difference between self and coactor scores might affect the size of the social-stimulus effect. In the present study, six pairs of human subjects matched-to-sample for points that were exchangeable for money. During a session, matching-to-sample problems were distributed so that a subject's score was ahead, behind, or about even with his coactor's score. The even condition produced the largest social-stimulus effects, i.e., the most audits that could not be attributed to non-social variables such as time or number of problems. The even condition may have produced the largest social-stimulus effects because it was the only condition where the major social reinforcer (being ahead) could be both present or absent and, consequently, the even condition was the only one where audits had a discriminative function with respect to the presence of the major social reinforcer.     

Evidence for an addition to the reading scan hypothesis

Letters were tachistoscopically presented in pairs to the left or right of fixation for 40 msec. The pair consisted of a target letter (B, D, P, or T) and a noise letter (all other letters of the alphabet except I), with the noise letter appearing either to the inside or the outside of the stimulus letter. S’s task was to report verbally the target letter as fast as possible. Reaction times and number of errors indicated that there was more interference when the noise letter occurred further from the fixation point than the target letter for both the left and right visual field. Since a reading scan cannot account for the results in the right visual field, an outside-toward-fixation scan is proposed. An analysis of the different kinds of errors indicated that the outside to fixation scan is more primitive than the reading scan in that it produces less detailed information about the letters than does the reading scan.     

Identifying subtypes of reading disability in the Spanish language

This study was designed to examine the dyslexic subtypes in a transparent orthography (i.e., Spanish language). The subtyping procedure used comparison with chronological-age-matched and reading-level controls on reaction times (RTs) to high frequency words and to pseudowords. Using regression-based procedures, the authors identified 20 phonological and 48 surface dyslexics from a sample of 89 dyslexic third-grade children by comparing them to chronological-age-matched controls on RTs to high frequency and pseudoword reading. However, when the dyslexic subtypes were defined by reference to reading-level controls, the same 20 phonological dyslexics were defined, but only 19 surface dyslexics were identified. Nevertheless, the results of the phonological awareness tasks and error analysis do not validate the division of the dyslexic sample into these subgroups.     

Comorbidity of ADHD and reading disability among clinic-referred children

Of a consecutive series of 115 boys diagnosed in a university outpatient clinic as ADHD, 39% also demonstrated a specific reading disability. Pure ADHD patients were compared with mixed ADHD + RD and normal controls on a battery of cognitive and attentional measures. The aim was to determine whether a distinct pattern of deficits would distinguish the groups. Both ADHD subgroups performed significantly worse than controls on measures of sequential memory and attentional tasks involving impulse control andplanful organization. Only ADHD+RD boys differed from controls on measures or rapid word naming and vocabulary. The reuslts are discussed within the framework of an automatic versus effortful information-processing model.