Specific reading disability: a view of the spectrum
edited by Bruce K. Shapiro, Pasquale J. Accardo & Arnold J. Capute, 1998, York Press Inc.,Timonium, Maryland

This is not a text for those new to the field of learning disabilities. It is rather for those working in the field who wish to upgrade and refine their existing knowledge of reading disability, often referred to as dyslexia. There are five sections in this text, which parallel the significant questions in the field of reading disability. These are:

Section 1: Reading Disability Within A Context
Section 2: Mechanisms of Specific Reading Disability
Section 3: Identification and Evaluation
Section 4: Management of Specific Reading Disability
Section 5: Outcomes and Predictions

It should be noted that the editors come from a medical background so, as one would expect, some of the chapters are devoted to the chemistry and neurology of this significant disability (see Section 2.) This should not dissuade teachers from consulting this section, as it is important for us to realize that gains are being made in identifying the mechanisms behind such a potentially crippling disability.

A second reason for consulting this section links with the problem the field has experienced to the present in operationally defining learning disability. See for example, Shaw, Cullen, et al., Journal of Learning Disabilities, 1995, vol. 28, no. 9, pp. 586-597. In presenting their model for making a definition functionally operative, the authors argue that, at a second level, there is a requirement to discern whether a disability is intrinsic to the individual or not. This could involve ‘a determination of central nervous system (CNS) dysfunction or specification of deficits in information processing (Kolligian & Sternberg, 1987; Swanson, 1987) that are related to the skill deficits identified in Level 1’. It is well worthwhile then to become fully aware of advances in this area as one significant contribution to the field.

From a practitioner’s perspective, Sections 3 and 4 are particularly valuable. Chapters 7 and 8 provide a lot of detailed information about the tests that need to be employed in obtaining a full profile of disability. While there has been a tendency to diminish the value of standardized assessment, Nass argues, ‘Assessment provides a framework for the presence of dyslexia… Tests and procedures should be selected to (a) answer specific questions and (b) provide a baseline against which future growth can be measured (Clark & Uhry, 1995).’ With this end in mind the author provides detailed information on various assessment devices that might be employed.

For those of us who have always held great hope that early identification of students likely to experience reading disability, it is disappointing to discover in Chapter 5 by Hollis S. Scarborough that we still have along way to go in obtaining screening tools that can accurately predict this population. Certainly, measures of phonological awareness development appear to be an important contribution to a battery developed for this purpose. As Scarborough points out, ‘the fact remains that the preponderance of the available data is reasonably consistent with a phonological core model’. But the disappointment thus far is that ‘even when multiple predictors are used to identify children at risk, both sensitivity (78% on average) and positive predictive power (55%) have been lower than desirable for practical applications. That is, 22% of children who developed reading disabilities were not initially classified as at risk, and 45% of kindergartners meeting the risk criterion did not become disabled readers.’ And so the search goes on.

Chapters 9 and 10 are worth a visit if only to reacquaint the practitioner with teaching approaches that have been used for many years (e.g., Direct Instruction, Learning to Mastery, Multisensory Learning) that still appear to have value for the target group. It may be especially worthwhile to pay special attention to the short section ‘Metacognitive Approaches to Remediating Reading Problems. In Chapter 10, Torgeson provides explicit principles in remediation. These are worth studying. From examining Torgeson’s research studies it becomes apparent that interventions attempting to improve word recognition need to be structured, intense and long-standing. The PASP (Phonological Awareness Plus Synthetic Phonics) group in his study received the most intensive treatment. Nevertheless, 2.4% of the children selected for the treatment (bottom 10% of the population) failed to develop normal reading skills in spite of the 2 and half years of preventive intervention they received. It would be well worthwhile keeping in touch with Torgeson’s longitudinal study.

In short, this text has particular relevance for those working in the field of learning disabilities. It is particularly relevant to those who wish to keep abreast of research into the big questions that haunt the field. Ultimately, STLD need to make their own decisions about so many issues of assessment and teaching but to do so with information of the relevant research should ensure the development of hypotheses that reap happy results for most students.