Do Processing Patterns of Strengths and Weaknesses Predict Differential Treatment Response?
OBJECTIVE
No previous empirical study has investigated whether the LD identification decisions of proposed methods to operationalize processing strengths and weaknesses (PSW) approaches for LD identification are associated with differential treatment response. We investigated whether the identification decisions of the concordance/discordance model (C/DM; Hale & Fiorello, 2004) and Cross Battery Assessment approach (XBA method; Flanagan, Ortiz, & Alfonso, 2007) were consistent and whether they predicted intervention response beyond that accounted for by pretest performance on measures of reading.


METHODS
Psychoeducational assessments were administered at pretest to 203 4thgraders with low reading comprehension and individual results were utilized to identify students who met LD criteria according to the C/DM and XBA methods and students who did not. Resulting group status permitted an investigation of agreement for identification methods and whether group status at pretest (LD or not LD) was associated with differential treatment response to an intensive reading intervention.


RESULTS
The LD identification decisions of the XBA and C/DM demonstrated poor agreement with one another (κ = -.10). Comparisons of posttest performance for students who met LD criteria and those who did not meet were largely null, with small effect sizes across all measures.


CONCLUSIONS
LD status, as identified through the C/DM and XBA approaches, was not associated with differential treatment response and did not contribute educationally meaningful information about how students would respond to intensive reading intervention. These results do not support the value of cognitive assessment utilized in this way as part of the LD identification process.
University of Houston.
Jeremy
J
Miciak
Education Northwest.
Jacob L
JL
Williams
University of Houston.
W Pat
WP
Taylor
University of Houston.
Paul T
PT
Cirino
University of Houston.
Jack M
JM
Fletcher
The University of Texas at Austin.
Sharon
S
Vaughn
cognitive assessment; learning disabilities; reading disabilities