Reading Skills in Emotionally Disturbed, Institutionalized Adolescents

Abstract

THE MOST vital academic problem facing the I school-age child is the development of adequate language skills. As he progresses through school, reading skills, even more than adeptness in oral communication, become increasingly important. Upon his reading depends his acquisition of most other classroom subjects. Although ability to read adequately is no insurance that the child will do well in other academic areas, inability to read adequately acts as almost insurmountable ob stacle in his attempt at learning academic subjects. Over the years parents have been concerned with the education of their children, but their concern appears to have increased since the ad vent of the space age. Examine the nearest dis play rack of popular magazines : one, two, three, perhaps even more, will contain essay or two on the education of youth. Often they contain suggested remedies to cure the existing ills. Granted, a newsstand survey may discover only those topics thought by the editors to increase sales ; however, a recent study by Larson and Sel land (12) indicates that public concern is some what justified. They found 36.7% of the sixth graders in the Fargo, North Dakota, public schools to be reading one year or more below their mental age level ; the major share of the retarded readers, 77%, were of, at least, average intellec tual ability. With cause and cures rampant in the outpour ing of the press, a glance at the professional literature adds to one's confusion about the prob lem of reading disability and its solution. Miller, Margolin, and Yolles (14), for example, consider reading disability an important reservoir of psychopathology from which a variety of dis orders may emerge, but Hansburg (6) considers it to be the symptom of existing conflict bei tween the individual's needs and desires and his | restraining super-ego. Definitions of reading dis| ability and statements about its etiology can readily be found to demonstrate the absence of definitive answers and factual knowledge. The present study was undertaken in order to provide, if possible, answers to some of the many questions about reading disability. In effect, it is attempt at cross-validating the results of sev eral previous studies: 1. Reading problems have been identified in 30 to 85% of the children and adolescents institu tionalized for emotional disturbance or delin quency (13). Is this the incidence rate when the patient's intellectual ability is considered? 2. Several psychometric test patterns are said to be associated with reading problems. Can these patterns be used to differentiate between good and poor readers? 3. Rabinovitch and his associates (16) identi fied three etiological types of reading disability. Can these types be identified in the present sample? 4. Various factors have been thought to be of etiological importance in reading problems. Can the relationships be replicated?