DISCREPANTLY POOR VERBAL SKILLS IN POOR READERS - A FAILURE OF LEARNING OR ABILITY

Poor verbal skills in poor readers have long been reported in the lite rature. There have been many attempts to understand the interaction be tween poor verbal ability and poor verbal achievement. The methodologi cal problems are considerable, including the measurement of verbal abi lity, which has been confounded by previous learning. A new reasoning test, the VESPAR, has been designed to measure novel problem solving a nd thus to be less reliant on acquired verbal skills. One hundred and seventy 14-year-olds completed tie VESPAR, the Cognitive Abilities Tes t (CAT) and a single-word reading test. Overall, verbal scores were we aker than spatial scores. A subgroup of 38 pupils with particularly ma rked discrepancies between verbal and non-verbal CAT was identified. T he especially discrepant pupils were matched with other non-discrepant pupils from the year group for either verbal or non-verbal CAT. The d iscrepant group's reading was at the same level as the matched verbal CAT group. However, the primary verbal ability of the discrepancy grou p, as measured on the VESPAR, was greater than the matched verbal CAT group. This raises the possibility that CAT-but not VESPAR-discrepant pupils may be at particular risk of under-achievement in the verbal do main.