WORD RECOGNITION SKILLS OF LEARNING DISABLED CHILDREN AND AVERAGE STUDENTS’

Abstract

The ability of learning disabled and average students’ to recognize and identify words was investigated. Two informal reading measures, the Sundbye Minimal Contrast Phonics Test and an oral reading sample, were administered to three groups. The groups were composed of learning disabled students evidencing reading problems (LD), average students matched with the learning disabled group on reading level and IQ (YN), and average students matched with the learning disabled group on chronological age and IQ (ON). The LD group and average readers did not differ on identification of symbol‐sound associations, word recognition proficiency, the ability to detect and correct word recognition errors, and the ability to use information within the text to recognize words. However, the LD and ON group differed on mean number of word recognition errors. Educational implications of the findings were discussed and a profile of the word recognition skills of learning disabled children was presented.     

A MOLE LEAVES HIS HOLE

This paper uses the example of setting up a community-based adolescent psychotherapy and counselling service to explore the difficulties and anxieties that can arise when psychoanalytic practitioners venture out of the consulting room to become involved in planning and organizing services. Emphasis is placed on the complications of such a task in a climate of rapid change, when levels of anxiety, fuelled in many different ways, can threaten the viability of the task one is engaged in. The author argues that in a political climate that is generally not very supportive of psychoanalysis, it is possible none the less for psychoanalytic ideas to have an important impact on how psychological services can develop, and this in itself can challenge many of the preconceptions about psychoanalytic practitioners that one can be confronted with when one leaves the comfort of the consulting room.