Component Deficit and Academic Remediation of Learning Disabilities

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of (1) remediation of hypothesized component deficits given prior to remediation of known academic deficiencies, and (2) remediation of known academic deficiencies alone. A corollary purpose was to study the immediate effect, if any, of the component deficit remediation on the criterion measure.

The component deficits for the Re-Cognition Function (ages eight through 11) were: (1) haptic discrimination, defined as difficulty in noting differences in sense of touch and muscle sensation, (2) visualization deficit, defined as difficulty in recognizing wholes from sensation of the parts, and (3) figureground, defined as difficulty in sifting important from unimportant stimuli.

The criterion measure was the Stanford Diagnostic Reading Test (SDRT), Forms A and B. In this study, the SDRT was used in two ways: (1) as a basis for planning asademic remediation, and (2) as pretest and posttest measures of academic improvement after component deficit remediation and academic deficit remediation.

Two research questions were investigated: (1) How do scores on the SDRT of children having component deficit remediation plus academic deficit remediation compare with scores of children having academic deficit remediation only, and (2) Do scores on the SDRT improve immediately after component deficit remediation?

Twenty-seven certified learning disability teachers carried out the remediation under the supervision of the researcher with 76 children labeled learning disabled by the school district, ages eight through 11.

The answer to question one was, the scores on the SDRT of children having component deficit remediation plus academic deficit remediation were higher than scores of the children having academic deficit remediation only, when effect size analyses were made.

The answer to the second question was “yes,” scores on the SDRT improve immediately after component deficit remediation on every subtest when effect size analyses were made.

Effect size, a measure of treatment effectiveness, was calculated by finding the difference between the means of the experimental and control groups divided by the control group standard deviation. Effect size was then translated into notions of overlapping distributions of scores and comparable percentiles. Its descriptive nature made it appealing for this investigatory research of treatment effects.