Correlations of Reading Achievement and Ability for Learning Disabled Students

Abstract

5 boys and 7 girls enrolled in a special education class in a large metropolitan school system participated in a pilot study of the relationship between achievement in reading, spelling, arithmetic, and ability as measured by the WISC-R and Basic Visual-memory Association Test. The Test of Reading Comprehension was also administered. Achievement in reading, spelling, and arithmetic was significantly related to performance on all three measures. The lack of correlation of all other variables with the Test of Reading Comprehension suggests these learning disabled youngsters' inability to identify words successfully may preclude them from processing the relational aspects of meaning in longer discourse. That results were based on a very limited sample points to the need for further studies with larger samples of learning disabled and normally achieving students.