ABSTRACT
Approximately 80% of prison inmates are reported to be functionally illiterate. We hypothesized that poor single word decoding (the chief feature of dyslexia) accounts for a significant percentage of that rate. We studied 253 subjects selected randomly from more than 130,000 Texas prison inmates. Among them, we conducted a cross-sectional sample survey of recently admitted Texas inmates, beginning with social and educational background and followed by an educational test battery that included measures of word attack skill and reading comprehension. Deficient performance was defined primarily as single word decoding performance that measured below the 25th percentile on the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test. We found that 47.8% of the inmates were deficient in word attack skills. Word attack skills were detected in each group defined by gender and ethnicity. Nearly two thirds of the subjects scored poorly in reading comprehension.
Subject(s)
Dyslexia/epidemiology , Prisoners , Adolescent , Adult , Chi-Square Distribution , Cross-Sectional Studies , Dyslexia/diagnosis , Female , Humans , Male , Middle Aged , Prevalence , Reading , Risk Factors , Texas/epidemiologySubject(s)
Brain Damage, Chronic/psychology , Congenital Abnormalities/psychology , Child , Humans , Male , Motor Skills , Psychological TestsABSTRACT
In an initial factor-analytic study using preschool children (41 girls, 44 boys), the errors and latencies on the Matching Familiar Figures Test saturated different factors. A second study (47 boys, 39 girls), employing the Kansas Reflection Impulsivity Scale for Preschoolers, replicated this finding. In addition, the error (but not the latency) was associated with measures of gross-motor, fine-motor, and perceptual-motor coordination. The results suggest that error measures a maturational dimension of task-oriented attention for this age group.
