Learning-Disabled Boys as Adolescents: Cognitive Factors and Achievement

Abstract

Ninety-three boys, classified in grade school as either learning-disabled (LD) or normal achievers (controls), were followed-up at age 14. The 62 LD returnees remained, as a group, seriously retarded on the Gray Oral Reading Test and on the spelling and arithmetic subtests of the Wide Range Achievement Test (WRAT), but were just over a year behind (age norms) on the WRAT reading test. Controls averaged 10th-grade level on both reading tests and at grade level on the WRAT spelling and arithmetic tests. LD returnees wrote significantly slower than controls, their own names as well as a word and short sentence. Students who had poorest outcomes at follow-up were those who had the most severe early reading problems and who had depressed scores on the Information, Arithmetic, Digit Span, and Coding subtests of the WISC. This cluster continued to separate LD students and controls at age 14. Achievement-level outcomes were not related to earlier classification by activity level and neurological maturity on to intervention efforts.