Abstract

Research tends to confirm the concept that it is imperative to diagnose learning disorders early and start remediation immediately. Slingerland (1977) developed an assessment tool, which reportedly aids in the identification of remediational needs before a child has experienced failure. This screening device was designed to "show modality weaknesses that call for specific instruction to prevent early failare" (Slingerland, 1977). All of the subtests from the Pre-Reading Screening Procedures are cross-modality tasks because the testing of a modality, "Auditory" or "Visual", requires the use of one or two other modalities (motor or speech) to generate a response. In order to determine whether children who failed Slingerland'ss cross-modality tasks did so because of basic aural/oral processing difficulties, thirty-six kindergarten students were evaluated with the Slingerland screening device. One-third of those subjects obtained ratings of 11 Below "M" on the screening test, identifying them as subjects for this study. These twelve subjects were then evaluated with eight tests from commercially-produced assessment instruments chosen to provide purely aural/oral tasks, uncontaminated by visual-graphic stimuli.

The results found that eight of the twelve subjects failed at least one of the eight subtests, thereby implying that basic auditory processing difficulties are related to the failing of the Slingerland Pre-Reading Screening Procedures. Analysis of the results found that, on only one subtest, the majority of children scored at or above the mean performance level of children of kindergarten age. All the other subtests revealed the subjects' auditory skills to be below average for chronological age.

LLU Discipline

Speech Pathology

Department

Speech-Language Pathology

School

Graduate School

First Advisor

Melvin S. Cohen

Second Advisor

E. Evelyn Britt

Third Advisor

Grenith Zimmerman

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Degree Level

M.S.

Year Degree Awarded

1982

Date (Title Page)

4-1982

Language

English

Library of Congress/MESH Subject Headings

Language Disorders; Language Tests

Type

Thesis

Page Count

vii; 45

Digital Format

PDF

Digital Publisher

Loma Linda University Libraries

Usage Rights

This title appears here courtesy of the author, who has granted Loma Linda University a limited, non-exclusive right to make this publication available to the public. The author retains all other copyrights.

Collection

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Collection Website

http://scholarsrepository.llu.edu/etd/

Repository

Loma Linda University. Del E. Webb Memorial Library. University Archives

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