| Abstract: | In this paper we address the issue of separating reading disability from general intelligence in order to identify those cognitive processes which discriminate between poor and good readers when intelligence is covaried. Subjects were 140 Grade 5 and 6 students who were administered Lorge-Thorndike intelligence test (1964), a reading decoding test and cognitive tests which measure planning, attention-arousal and simultaneous-successive processing. The tests which emerged as discriminators between good and poor readers when Lorge-Thorndike full scale IQ was covaried, were three measures of successive processing (Sequence Repetition, Naming Time, Speech Rate) and a measure of selective attention, the familiar Stroop Color-Word test. Subsequently, a comparison of reading disabled high and low average IQ children confirmed that the four tests were performed poorly by both groups. All four tests involve the use of articulatory representation, confirming the important role speech-related processes play in reading (decoding). The results support the notion that deficient speech-related processes may be the central problem of the majority of poor readers, especially those of above-average intelligence. Future directions for research on phonological coding and articulation were suggested. |
