A Comparison of the Wisc Patterns of Male Retarded and Non-Retarded Readers

Abstract

THE PROBLEM of whether retarded readers perform in a typical way on the WISC has received some attention in previous research. The results have not been conclusive although some agreement is evident. Results indicating that the verbal scores of retarded readers are significantly lower than their performance scores are common to most studies. However, the reported patterns of subtest scores differ considerably. Graham and Kam on o (5), using the WAIS, found unsuc cessful readers significantly low in all verbal tests and the digit symbol subtests (same as coding on WISC). Other authors (1, 2, 4, 7) agree that retarded readers tend to score significantly low on the arithmetic and coding subtests although Burks and Bruce (2) and Altus (1) found the information subtest score to be low also. Burks and Bruce con eluded further that retarded readers scored s i g n i f i cantly high on the comprehension, picture arrangement, and block de sign subtests. The methods employed by these sev eral researchers varied greatly and the experimen tal groups were often exceedingly small, less than fifteen.