Differential Diagnosis of Subtypes of Developmental Dyslexia with the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC)

Abstract

Using Boder's model of developmental dyslexia, 117 children were screened into normal, nonspecific, dysphonetic, dyseidetic, and alexic reader groups. These groups were then compared according to their performance on the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC). Multivariate analysis of variance resulted in a significant separation between groups. However, univariate analysis indicated that it was only the Sequential Processing factor that separated the normal from the dyslexic readers and that no differences existed among the dyslexic subtypes. Discriminate analysis produced an overall hit-rate of 35% across the five reading groups using the Simultaneous and Sequential factors of the K-ABC. The highest hit-rates were for the normal and alexic patterns. These results indicate that the K-ABC, particularly the Sequential factor and respective subtests, provides a useful method for discriminating between normal and dyslexic readers. However, the ability of the K-ABC to discriminate between normal readers and Boder's dyslexic subtypes remains less certain.