How to Detect Reading/Learning Disabilities Using WISC-III - Softcover

Searls, Evelyn F.; International Reading Association

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0872071863 ISBN 13: 9780872071865

Publisher: Intl Literacy Assn, 1997

Synopsis

This book provides classroom teachers, reading teachers, and teachers of students with specific learning disabilities information about one of the most widely used intelligence tests, the third edition of the "Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-III)." It also explains the use of intelligence testing in the diagnosis of reading/learning disabilities.

Author Evelyn Searls acquaints educators with the organization and administration of the WISC-III, the tasks involved in each subtest, and what each subtest is designed to measure. She also suggests procedures for analyzing WISC-III scores in ways that may yield valuable information for the teacher as he or she seeks to remediate a student's reading/learning disability.

About this title

About the Author

Evelyn F. Searls is Professor Emeritus at the University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, USA.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

From Chapter 1

Overheard in the teachers' lounge: "I just got back the psychologist's report on Bill. It says he has average intelligence. If that's so, why on earth can't he read?"

Intelligence is a necessary prerequisite to the act of reading. Generally speaking, superior intelligence produces superior readers and borderline intelligence, poor readers. There are numerous exceptions to this generalization, however, particularly in the average range of intelligence. Investigators have found disabled readers and even nonreaders to have average or above average intelligence as measured on standardized intelligence tests.

Intelligence tests are used to help determine the presence of a reading/learning disability. Jim, a sixth-grade student reading at fourth-grade level, may not be a disabled reader. On the other hand, his classmate, Carol, who reads at grade level, may have a reading disability. Unless we have some way to determine whether there is a discrepancy between achievement level and intellectual capacity, we cannot say that a reading disability may exist (Harris & Sipay, 1985). To ascertain this discrepancy, reading specialists have long advocated the use of an individually administered IQ test, because group IQ tests, requiring silent reading with good comprehension and often under timed conditions, may penalize poor readers. Furthermore, with the passage of the U.S. Education for All Handicapped Children Act (PL 94-192) in 1975, an individual IQ test was federally mandated in the assessment of students suspected of having specific learning disabilities.

The most widely used, individually administered IQ test is the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (Kamphaus, 1993), now in its third edition and known as WISC-III. It must be administered by trained personnel, usually a school psychologist, and yields a global IQ that indicates a level of intellectual functioning based on how the student performed on certain tasks. The WISC-III is best characterized as a test that gathers samples of behavior under fixed conditions, is a measure of an individual's past accomplishments, and is predicative of success in traditional school subjects (Kaufman, 1994; Wesman, 1968)

In addition to global IQ, the WISC-III indicates how a student performs on verbal tasks, performance tasks, and on each separate subtest task. For this reason the WISC-III (and it's predecessors, the WISC and the WISC-R) has been useful in the assessment of reading/learning disabilities. Faced with the fact that disabled readers/learners often had global IQs in the average range or above, investigators began to observe how they scored on different tasks presented by the subtests. Summaries of research by Strang (1968), Farr (1969), Huelsmann (1970), Sattler (1988), and Kaufman (1994) indicate two rather consistent findings: (a) Groups of students with reading/learning disabilities tend to score higher on the Performance Scale than on the Verbal Scale, and (b) they tend to score lower on certain subtests.

Since almost all the research has been ex post facto (after students have been identified as having reading/learning problems), the issue of cause and effect is still debatable. Were the students inherently inadequate in certain aspects of intelligence (as tapped by the subtests on which they scored low), or had they failed to develop in these areas because of their lack of reading/learning ability? Farr (1969) concluded from his review of the research that reading disability "negatively affects performance on intelligence tests" (p. 186).

Edition details

• Publisher: Intl Literacy Assn
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0872071863
• ISBN 13: 9780872071865
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 3
• Number of pages: 96