COGNITIVE PROCESSING AND DEVELOPMENTAL-CHANGES IN FINNISH SCHOOL STUDENTS - COMPARISON BETWEEN NORMAL AND LANGUAGE-IMPAIRED (DYSPHASIC) STUDENTS

Course of cognitive development was investigated in a sample of normal school students (N=163) in the middle part of Finland by giving the s tudents tests of four cognitive functions that were categorized accord ing to the PASS theory of intelligence (planning, attention, simultane ous and successive processing). Subsequently, a group of students in s pecial education (N=60, language impaired school students) was also st udied for possible deviations in cognitive development. The age of the students varied from 7 to 19 years. Three main goals were (I) to stud y developmental trends of cognitive functions across three different a ge groups of school students and in two samples, (2) to identify disti nct cognitive subgroups and profiles among the students, and, (3) to c ompare the cognitive profiles of normal and language impaired (dysphas ic) students. First, in a cross-sectional design, it was seen linear c ognitive trends for all PASS tasks, however so, that for the language impaired group the cognitive development teas not as salient as for th e normal students. Especially successive processing did not show devel opmental trend in the sample of language impaired (dysphasic) students . Secondly, a cluster analysis procedure following a factor analysis d emonstrated two very distinct cognitive subgroups among the normal and dysphasic students. The subgroups in both separate samples differed f rom each other in successive and simultaneous processes. Additionally, the two subgroups of the normal students differed from each other als o in planning. Thirdly, compared to the normal students, the dysphasic highly functioning subgroup did worse than normals in nonverbal succe ssive ordering, but did better in verbal successive task. Contrary to expectations, the deviation was not on the verbal bur instead on a non verbal task. Need for extending PASS research into other types of lear ning problems (such as arithmetics, severe learning disability) is art iculated. Pragmatically, observed minor differences in cognitive struc ture between the two student samples refer to differential remediation and skill training.