Utility of the Luria-Nebraska Neuropsychological Battery-Children's Revision in the evaluation of reading disabled children

Abstract

The Luria-Nebraska Neuropsychological Battery-Children's Revision (LNNBCR) was used to investigate differences between reading disabled (RD) and academically normal children. The groups of 32 subjects each were equivalent with regard to age, sex, race, IQ, and SES of primary wage earner in the family. RD subjects, all of whom had been identified as learning disabled by the school, were moderately to severely impaired in reading, but not in math. Performance of the groups was significantly different on the battery as a whole and on an abbreviated form of the battery which excluded scales composed of items measuring language, reading, and arithmetic. With the abbreviated battery, the largest group differences were found on the Rhythm scale. It is hypothesized that poor performance on the Rhythm scale may reflect impaired auditory processing, which has a negative impact on the development of basic skills required for reading. A stepwise discriminant function analysis using the abbreviated battery correctly identified 84% of subjects. Evidence supporting discriminative validity of two methods of identifying RD children was found. Performance on an Experimental scale composed of nonreading items presumed to assess the integrity of areas of the brain mediating basic reading skills was no worse than on an equivalent randomly selected pool of items. The LNNB-CR may be a potentially valuable instrument for investigating neuropsychological differences between RD and normal children in that it provides relevant information to educators who must formulate remediation programs for RD children.