Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Dissertation Dish: WJ III and ADHD and poor reading

Two new unpublished dissertations located that used Woodcock-Johnson III (WJ III) measures (conflict of interest disclosure - I'm a coauthor of the WJ III) to investigate the relations between (a) Gs and poor reading and (b) WJ III clinical clusters and tests and ADHD.

In a sample of 26 ADHD (and 26 controls), Bray (2004) reported that the WJ III clinical clusters, based on discriminative function analysis, correctly classified 72.4% of the ADHD subjects. From a pool of 11 WJ III tests, correct classification was 87.2 %. The most highly discriminating tests were Auditory Attention, Auditory Work Memory and Rapid Picture Naming. Interesting.

Urso (2008) reports strong relations between processing speed (Gs) and poor reading performance. Although the results are interesting, the real value of this dissertation (IMHO) is the excellent literature review of the processing speed (Gs/Gt) literature, particularly as it relates to reading disabilities.

Hopefully the authors of these dissertations will work them into manuscripts to be submitted for journal publication.Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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