Can't Jane read or won't Jane read? An analysis of pre-reading skills designed to differentiate skill deficits from performance deficits.

Abstract

This single-student experiment demonstrated a method for assessing a student's poor performance on pre-reading measures that tested skill deficit and performance deficit hypotheses. This assessment was conducted for a student whose parents reported concerns regarding a variety of indicators of school functioning. During the summer prior to his entering first grade, his letter name knowledge, letter sound production, and Dolch word recognition were assessed. The assessment was conducted in a multiple baseline across the three reading tasks. Rewards and instruction were introduced sequentially across the three sets of reading materials. The results supported a combination reading skill and performance deficit hypothesis for the student. The assessment identified procedures that resulted in a substantial increase in reading fluency for these tasks. Procedures are adaptable to the needs of teachers, psychologists, and other education professionals who wish to determine whether reading problems result from poor skills or poor motivation. ********** Teachers, school psychologists, and other school practitioners are constantly faced with the learning problems of students who do not complete academic tasks or perform desired behaviors. These include a wide range of behaviors, from strict academic tasks such as division facts to school survival skills such as turning in assignments. Although it may be clear that the behaviors are not performed, it is often unclear whether the student does or does not know how to perform the skill. This study was conceived with the goal of designing a method for sorting these questions for students with academic problems. Skill deficits and performance deficits were originally proposed as classifications for social incompetence in children (Gresham, 1981). Within this system, a social behavior problem is classified as a skill deficit when the child does not have the skill required to perform a given social behavior. For example, Jack begins kindergarten in September. He is an only child who lives far from town and has not had the opportunity to play with other children. Jack's teacher notices that during recess, Jack does not play with the other children on the playground. When Jack's mother explains the situation to his teacher, his teacher suspects that Jack may not know how to ask the other students to join their game. She decides to show him how this is done and practice with him before going onto the playground the next day. On the other hand, a child who has been observed performing a particular social skill but does not do so under the conditions demanded by the situation is said to have a performance deficit. For example, after Jane's family has moved to a new school, her teacher reports to her parent that Jane does not play with the other children during recess. Jane's father replies to the teacher that Jane played well with other children in her last school. In this case, it is possible to determine that Jane has the requisite skills to play with others but has not used them in this new environment. Jane's teacher determines that the problem is a performance deficit and decides to ask other students to invite Jane to play during recess. Although these skill and performance deficit classifications were originally developed to describe problems in social competence in children, the concepts can be extended to describe problems in academic competence (Noell, Witt, Gilbertson, Ranier, & Freeland, 1997). An academic problem identified by a school practitioner would be described as a skill deficit when that skill had not been learned by the student in spite of instruction. The academic problem would be described as a performance deficit when, despite having observed the student perform that skill in another situation or at another time, the student does not perform the skill sufficiently to be considered competent according to the standards determined appropriate for that material. …