READING AND SPELLING DEFICITS AMONG CHILDREN ATTENDING A PSYCHIATRIC DAY TREATMENT PROGRAM

To investigate the specific behavioural and cognitive characteristics which may account for academic deficits in children with psychiatric d isorders, 50 children admitted to a day treatment and school program w ere assessed using behaviour questionnaires for parents and teachers, and tests assessing intelligence (WISC-R), language (CELF-R) and acade mic performance (Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement). The academi c measures Reading Decoding, Reading Comprehension and Spelling formed the dependent variables. Behaviour and cognitive measures which disti nguished the sample from normative data constituted the independent va riables. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were performed in o rder to identify behaviour and cognitive measures accounting for the a cademic deficits. In the analyses, three measures (Digit Span, Sentenc e Assembly, Recalling Sentences), probably assessing overlapping cogni tive/linguistic functions, accounted for a large proportion of varianc e for Reading Decoding (0.47), Reading Comprehension (0.63) and Spelli ng (0.29). None of the behaviour measures accounted for any variance o f the academic variables. It is argued that linguistic dysfunction is a primary deficit which underlies problems in academic learning.