Extraneous bodily movements and irrelevant vocalizations by dyslexic and non-dyslexic boys during calculation tasks.

Thirty dyslexic boys, aged between 9 and 15 years, and 30 age-matched controls were tested on a series of sums involving division, subtraction and addition. During the testing a record was kept of any bodily movements or verbal utterances (vocalizations) irrelevant to the task in hand. It was found that the dyslexics produced many more extraneous bodily movements and many more irrelevant vocalizations than did the controls. Possible reasons for these findings are tentatively suggested.

Motor performance and dyslexia in a national cohort of 10-year-old children.

Data from the 10-year follow-up of the 1970 British Births Survey were examined for associations between motor performance and dyslexia. Five tests of motor performance were used: (a) balancing on one leg, (b) throwing a ball in the air, clapping and catching it, (c) walking backwards, (d) sorting matches and (e) graphaesthesia (recognizing shapes drawn on the palm of the hand). These tests were given to 12 950 children aged between 10 and 11 years old. The cohort was divided into nine groups based on three levels of literacy achievement and three levels of possible indicators of dyslexia. The group with the most severe underachievement and most possible indicators (children most likely to be severely dyslexic) comprised about 2% of the total. Of this group, 35.3% failed one motor test and 16.4% failed more than one (51.7% in total), compared with 26.8% and 7.7% of normal achievers. The children had greater problems with balance than those in the other two severely underachieving groups but the effects were small. It is suggested that the use of a balance test only as a screener for dyslexia could result in a proportion of dyslexics being missed and that remedial motor training programmes for children with dyslexia should be offered only to those with co-occurring motor difficulties.

Criteria for evaluating interventions.

By common consent there is a 'gold standard' in reference to which the efficacy of medical interventions needs to be evaluated. It is suggested in this paper that in educational research achievement of this gold standard is rarely possible. It does not follow, however, that research that falls short of this standard is therefore valueless; there may be many different kinds of good (and less good) reasons for accepting particular conclusions.

Verbatim and gist recall of sentences by dyslexic and non-dyslexic adults.

Forty-eight college students, 24 of them dyslexic, were presented with four sentences of increasing complexity. Participants were asked to repeat each sentence and a record was kept of the number of repetitions required before 100% correct accuracy was achieved. None of the 24 control participants required a total of more than eight repetitions over the four sentences, whereas among the dyslexics the total number of repetitions needed ranged from one to 25. Dyslexic participants were unpredictable in their performance from one level of difficulty to the next and inter-individual variability was far greater in the dyslexic group than in the control group. Overall, despite their relatively poor performance in achieving verbatim accuracy relative to non-dyslexic participants, dyslexic individuals regularly managed to preserve the gist of the sentences. Some theoretical issues arising from these results are discussed.

A pictographic method for teaching spelling to Greek dyslexic children.

In the Greek orthography every letter consistently represents the same sound, but the same sound can be represented by different letters or pairs of letters. This makes spelling more difficult than reading. Two methods of teaching spelling to Greek dyslexic children are compared. The first involved pictograms (specially drawn pictures) for use when alternative spellings are possible. This is referred to as the 'PICTO' method. The second was in effect a combination of two traditional methods: the first involved the teaching of letter-sound correspondences in a multisensory way; the second involved the use of concepts derived from linguistics, the children being taught the derivations of words and shown how the same root morphemes, derivative morphemes, etc., were cosistently represented by the same spelling pattern. This combination of methods is referred to as 'TRAD', signifying 'traditional'. There were 72 subjects in the study, aged between 9 and 11 years. Four different teachers, each using both PICTO and TRAD, took part in the teaching sessions. The PICTO method proved considerably more effective; and possible reasons are suggested as to why this might be so.

Ordinary language: The contributions of Gilbert Ryle and John Austin to the experimental analysis of behavior.

The aim of this paper is to show how "conceptual analysis"-the philosophical method used by Gilbert Ryle and John Austin-can contribute to behavior analysis in general and in particular to the elucidation and development of views put forward by B. F. Skinner. One of the key requirements is a sensitivity to the precise circumstances in which particular combinations of words are uttered. Without such sensitivity, it is difficult to make informed decisions as to when ways of talking should be changed and when they should be left as they are.

Dyslexia and musical notation.

The authors examine the difficulties experienced by dyslexic musicians in the formalized study of music, in particular, musical notation. They describe case studies from the literature and from personal interviews they conducted with musicians about their educational histories, musical weaknesses and strengths, and successful compensatory strategies. The authors make instructional suggestions for educators and musicians with dyslexia on how to use multisensory approaches to teach musical notation.

Naming ability and oral fluency in dyslexic adolescents.

Twenty-one dyslexic boys, aged between 11¾ and 18, were presented with drawings of familiar objects and asked to name the part of the object to which an arrow pointed, for example the flex of an iron and the mane of a horse. They were also asked to explain the meanings of six words with only one meaning, six homophones (pier/peer), and six homographs (bat/bat). Nineteen control boys from the same background were also given the tests. No time constraints were imposed.It was found that the dyslexics were no less successful than the controls in finding the names for the parts of the objects and that they had no distinctive difficulty over homophones or homographs. However, when an analysis of errors was carried out, it was found that, in comparison with the controls, they produced more distortions of words (for instance bucker for buckle), gave fewer "don't know" responses, and showed a greater tendency to repeat the parent word. In the case of the word-explanation tasks, they produced more examples of inappropriate usage (for example, in response to pier, "is what people walk along and fishing off"), more incomplete sentences, more repetitions, more misunderstandings of words, and more unnecessary amplifications of their original response. There was an equal tendency in both groups to ignore the indefinite article (for example, a bat. What is a bat?-"To bat a ball"). The dyslexics used fewer relative clauses, and there was marginal evidence for more frequent use of you and your and of er, um, and well.It is argued that among dyslexic adolescents, there remains a residual uncertainty which affects their oral language, and it is suggested that teachers should pay more attention to this weakness, since if a pupil cannot express himself adequately in speech, he is likely to show similar difficulties in his written work.

Dyslexia: Anomaly or normal variation?

This paper is an interim report on a large-scale survey. The background to the authors' research into dyslexia is briefly outlined. Next comes an explication of the contrast between "anomaly" and "normal variation." Some details are then provided of a survey of 12,905 children, age ten, who were given a variety of educational and cognitive tests relevant to a diagnosis of dyslexia. It is shown that the resultant distributions of scores are incompatible with the hypothesis of normal variation. The counter-hypothesis, viz. that dyslexia involves some kind of anomaly, has, therefore, to that extent resisted refutation.

Rorschach responses of dyslexic children.

Fifteen dyslexic children between the ages of 8 and 16 were given the Rorschach ink blot test and their responses were compared with those of 12 suitably matched controls. It was found that they made very considerable use of the shape of the cards, but much less use of the other determinants (color, texture, etc.). Unlike the controls they seldom turned the cards around so as to obtain some fresh "view," and the overall number of responses per person was considerably less, with many of them giving only one response per card. It is suggested that the educational and social pressures on a dyslexic child often make him reluctant to commit himself in a context where "playing safe" is socially acceptable.