Lynne Feagans

Developmental Differences in the Comprehension and Production of Narratives by Reading-Disabled and Normally Achieving Children.

Reading-disabled childrens language skills have long been implicated in their poor school performance. This study is a cross-sectional and longitudinal examination of the narrative language skills of both reading-disabled and normally achieving children in an attempt to understand more clearly the language processes involved in these skills and how these processes relate to reading achievement over time. Children were read scriptlike narratives and asked to demonstrate their knowledge of the story by a nonverbal enactment of the narrative. After perfect enactment of the story was assured, the children were asked to paraphrase the narratives. Results from both the cross-sectional and longitudinal study indicated that reading-disabled children comprehended the narratives in a comparable fashion to normal peers, but they performed more poorly on a variety of content and complexity measures derived from their paraphrases. The study indicates that reading-disabled childrens language problems are persistent over time in the area of verbally expressing information, even when they have demonstrated nonverbal comprehension.

Adaptive Classroom Behavior of Learning Disabled Students

Historically, the goal of most descriptive research on learning disabilities has been to document intellectual or neurological differences between learning disabled and normal children. However, most researchers and teachers would acknowledge that classroom achievement not only depends on cognitive skills but also on certain behaviors that are adaptive to the demands of the classroom environment. This months Topical Review assesses what is currently known about how learning disabled children behave in the classroom. In treating this subject, the authors have asked a number of interesting questions beyond the basic one of describing differences between learning disabled and normal children. For example, they consider whether the information provided by teacher ratings and direct observation is similar, and they also assess the relationship between classroom behavior and academic achievement. It seems clear from the data presented in this review that an understanding of the classroom behaviors of learning disabled children is important to any complete description of their difficulties in school.---J.K.T.

The Effects of Daycare Intervention in the Preschool Years on the Narrative Skills of Poverty Children in Kindergarten.

The following study examined narrative skills in 89 poverty children, half of whom had received an infant daycare intervention (experimental) and half whom had not (control). At school entry these groups were split again with half of each group receiving school-age intervention. For each child in the sample, a child of the same sex in their classroom was chosen to form a local population sample (LPS). Children were read stories of varying thematic cohesiveness and asked both to comprehend and paraphrase the narratives in the fall and spring of the kindergarten year. The results indicated that the preschool experimental group performed better than the preschool control group on the comprehension and paraphrase of the stories in the fall but not in the spring. The LPS group was especially better able to paraphrase stories in comparison to the poverty groups. Discussion is centred on reasons for the convergence of the two poverty groups over kindergarten and the possible cultural differences that led to their poorer performance with respect to the LPS group.

Goodness of Fit in the Home Its Relationship to School Behavior and Achievement in Children with Learning Disabilities

This study examined whether a “goodness of fit” theoretical model, applied to families with and without children with learning disabilities, would be valuable in understanding the childrens performance in school. A home interview was conducted with 63 families with a child with learning disabilities and 53 families with a comparable child without learning disabilities. The mothers were asked to rate how their own child fit into the familys expectations for children. It was found that, for both groups of families, children who were rated as a “poor fit” in the home demonstrated less positive behavior in the classroom and poorer achievement over the elementary school years. There was some evidence that poor fit in the home was even more negatively related to outcomes for children with learning disabilities. Discussion is centered on the importance of this theoretical model for understanding the importance of the home on successful school function.

Visual Discrimination of Letter-Like Forms and Its Relationship to Achievement over Time in Children with Learning Disabilities:

The purpose of this study was to better understand whether visual discrimination abilities are related to reading intelligence and other achievement areas in children with learning disabilities and normally achieving children. Children with visual discrimination problems were identified using the Gibson letter-like visual discrimination task. This task was given to a large sample of children with learning disabilities as well as a sample of normally achieving children. All children were followed throughout elementary school. Results indicated that children with learning disabilities who had visual discrimination problems at 6 or 7 years of age performed more poorly in reading and general achievement over the elementary school years in comparison to the other children with learning disabilities and compared to normally achieving children. Discussion centers around the importance of this skill for reading.

Parents, infants, and day-care teachers: Interrelations and implications for better child care☆

Abstract Many young children are reared today in both family and child-care settings. The relation that exists between these two settings has important implications for child care. Bronfenbrenners (1979) ecological model is used as a way to view the interrelations among children, families, and child-care programs. Data from a study of infants in day care provide information on the time infants spend in family and day-care contexts, how parents and caregivers view childrens behavior in these two settings, and rates of otitis media (ear infections) and other illnesses for these children. Results show that infants spend about twice as many hours per day awake with parents as in day care. Regarding child behaviors, parents and caregivers seem to have similar behaviors they like and dislike, but they each see particular children quite differently with respect to these behaviors. Finally, infants in this sample were diagnosed with illnesses 60% to 70% of the time. Findings are discussed in terms of the ecological model with particular attention given to relations between parents and caregivers.

Neighborhood dialogues of black and white 5-year-olds

Abstract This study employed linguistic and dialogue measures to examine the language used by black, low-income and white, middle-income 5-year-old boys and girls in their neighborhood. Results showed no differences between white and black children on any linguistic or dialogue measure. Black boys, however, talked more than black girls. Correlational analysis revealed a positive relationship between language use in the neighborhood and the school language measures for the white, middle-income group, but not for the black, low-income group. Implications of these findings are discussed in relation to previous studies—particularly laboratory studies—which have found substantial language differences between black and white children and to the possible cultural and societal influences which might have affected the relationship between linguistic skill and school success in the black, low-income group.

The effects of intervention and social class on children's answers to concrete and abstract questions

Abstract The question/answer format is used as a basic tool by the teacher in communicating information to students and in evaluating their performance. Children from poverty backgrounds have been found to answer questions more poorly than middle-class children and they seem to have particular difficulty with abstract questions. This study was an attempt to understand these social class differences as well as to evaluate whether a preschool intervention program would help poverty children perform better on question answering. The subjects were 88 poverty children (45 had preschool intervention for 5 years and 43 did not). As these children entered kindergarten, 69 comparison children were selected. In the fall of their kindergarten year, two scriptlike stories were read to all children. They were asked to act out each story with props provided, and they were asked a series of concrete and abstract questions about each story. Results indicated that there were no intervention or social class differences in correct answers, but that the children with intervention made less serious errors than children without intervention. It was also found that the question variables were related to important developmental markers of school success for all groups. Implications of this study suggest that the types of response errors children make may be as or more important to understand than whether the answers are right or wrong.

Maternal attributions to a handicapped and a non-handicapped twin: a longitudinal study

This study was designed to explore a mothers attributions toward her twins from 11 to 32 months. One twin was developing normally while the other was extremely handicapped. Results suggest that the mother fine-tuned her attributions in response to the childrens developmental level of communicative development but not in other areas. Several hypotheses are explored for this lack of reflection of the childrens developmental level. One possible explanation is the possibility that the mother needed to feel that she was interacting with a competent infant and thus overinterpreted the handicapped infants behaviour in order to interact effectively.

Non-word speech in discourse: a strategy for language development

This paper is an attempt to use the language development strategy of one child from 15 to 25 months to illustrate the importance of the nonword aspects of communicative development on the develop ment of later language. The child studied here did not show an increase in MLU from 15 to 22 months but within a three-month period after 22 months jumped from 1.2 to 3.0 MLU. This spurt is explain in terms of the other aspects of communication the child was acquiring over the time frame, including social games, intonation, and syntax markers. The strategy of this child was described as a social interactive one which focused on the structural features of the dialogue, rather than on words.