Neuropsychological characteristics of empirically derived subgroups of learning disabled readers

Abstract

A neuropsychological battery comprised of 10 linguistic and visual perceptual tests, chosen because of their use in previous research, was administered to 75 learning disabled readers (LDR) and 42 normal readers (NR) matched for age and IQ. Standard scores, derived from a comparison of each LDR child's score with the NR group's performance on each test, were cluster analyzed to identify subgroups within the LDR group. Five subgroups were identified. Multivariate analysis of variance and discriminant analysis indicated that all LDR subgroups were significantly different from one another with respect to subgroup members' performance on the set of neuropsychological variables. In addition, some significant differences were found among the five subgroups on measures of oral reading, word-attack skills, and reading comprehension.