Families in which one child is an identified problem reader were compared with normal families on a conjoint decision-making task. Reading-problem (RP) families took longer to reach a decision, spent a greater percentage of their decision time in silence, and evidenced fewer exchanges of explicit information and more irrelevant transactions. Results are discussed in terms of the communication atmosphere in RP families, a relationship between these exchanges and a child's reading disorder, and the RP child's role in the family system.
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