Differing etiological explanations have been proposed to account for poor comprehenders' difficulties with reading comprehension, with some researchers emphasizing working memory deficits and others arguing for oral language weaknesses playing a key causal role. The authors contrasted these two theoretical accounts using data obtained from direct…

Test anxiety and its correlates were examined with college students with and without specific reading disability (RD; n = 50 in each group). Results indicated that college students with RD reported higher test anxiety than did those without RD, and the magnitude of these differences was in the medium range on two test anxiety scales. Relative to…

The aim of our study was to describe specific psychological resources of adults with developmental dyslexia and compare them with psychological resources of adults without developmental dyslexia. Potential differences were analyzed in visual-spatial, creative, and motivational abilities. No evidence was found for either creative, or visuospatial…

Do children who go on to develop dyslexia show normal verbal and nonverbal development before reading onset? According to the aptitude-achievement discrepancy model, dyslexia is defined as a discrepancy between intelligence and reading achievement. One of the underlying assumptions is that the general cognitive development of children who fail to…

Using 4 years of mathematics achievement scores, groups of typically achieving children (n = 101) and low achieving children with mild (LA-mild fact retrieval; n = 97) and severe (LA-severe fact retrieval; n = 18) fact retrieval deficits and mathematically learning disabled children (MLD; n = 15) were identified. Multilevel models contrasted…

This study examined longitudinally the double-deficit hypothesis in Greek, an orthographically consistent language, following a group of children from kindergarten to Grade 2. Four groups were formed on the basis of two composite scores of phonological and naming-speed criterion measures: a double-deficit group (DD; n = 17), a phonological deficit…

Factors associated with arithmetic-and-reading disability and specific arithmetic disability were investigated in over 850 representative New Zealand children. Reverse patterns of strengths and weaknesses with regard to verbal and nonverbal skills for these two types of arithmetic disability were found for boys but not for girls. (Author/DB)

This study, with 93 third grade poor readers, 54 fifth grade poor readers (with and without reading/IQ discrepancies), and 147 nondisabled first graders, found poor readers significantly more impaired than the matched first graders on all measures of nonword reading thus supporting the hypothesis of a deficit in nonword reading skills not…

Sixty students with specific learning disabilities in either reading and spelling (Group R-S) or arithmetic (Group A), as scored by the Woodcock-Johnson Psycho-Educational Battery, were compared. Results (measured by the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Third Edition) showed weaker nonverbal skills and more counseling among Group A…

This study examined the arithmetic calculation abilities of kindergarten and first-grade children (n=108) with different patterns of cognitive functioning: low language, low spatial ability, general delays, and nonimpaired. Nonverbal, story, and number fact problems were differentially sensitive to variation in cognitive ability. (Author/JDD)