The purpose of the present study was to explain the moderating role of rapid automatized naming (RAN) in word reading with a cusp catastrophe model. We hypothesized that increases in RAN performance speed beyond a critical point would be associated with the disruption in word reading, consistent with a "generic shutdown" hypothesis.…

A small but growing cadre of schools and districts across the nation are turning to interventions rooted in brain science to complement or replace core curricula. Such programs target a related set of cognitive processes, known as executive function (EF), that are key to learning. Executive function skills are essential for planning, executing,…

Language testing is not limited to assessing the performance of ordinary learners. It is also needed in other field such as assessing the ability of children with disabilities, those who have language disorders. Although a great deal of research has been carried out in the realm of stuttering, researchers still do not know why some children…

This study identified deficits in executive functioning in pre-adolescent preterms and modeled their role, along with processing speed, in explaining preterm/full-term differences in reading and mathematics. Preterms (less than 1750 g) showed deficits at 11 years on a battery of tasks tapping the three basic executive functions identified by…

The Woodcock-Johnson-Fourth edition (WJ IV; Schrank, McGrew, & Mather, 2014a) and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Fifth edition (WISC-V; Wechsler, 2014) are two of the major tests of cognitive abilities used in school psychology. The complete WJ IV battery includes the Woodcock-Johnson IV Tests of Cognitive Abilities (Schrank,…

Psychoeducational assessment, and specifically cognitive testing, is important to the role of school psychologists; however, the utility of such testing has been called into question, and its future is unclear. Researchers are divided into two camps. One side grew disenchanted with cognitive testing after the failure of the discrepancy method to…

This study investigated the effects of broad cognitive abilities derived from the Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) taxonomy, together with the effect of the general factor ("g"), on Wechsler Individual Achievement Test, Second Edition (WIAT-II) reading achievement. Structural equation modeling (SEM) and commonality analyses were applied to the…

This study set out to determine if the Planning, Attention, Simultaneous, Successive (PASS) cognitive processing model, a model previously investigated with children, would hold its factorial structure with adults. A collection of PASS experimental tasks were analyzed through Maximum Likelihood Factor Analysis. A four-factor solution consistent…

As the ongoing national indicator of what American students know and can do, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in Reading regularly collects achievement information on representative samples of students in grades 4, 8, and 12. Through "The Nation's Report Card," the NAEP Reading Assessment reports how well students…

Structural equation modeling procedures are applied to the standardization sample of the Woodcock-Johnson III to simultaneously estimate the effects of a psychometric general factor (g), specific cognitive abilities, and reading skills on reading achievement. The results of this study indicate that g has a strong direct relationship with basic…

An integrated, three-dimensional cognitive model of reading comprehension was used to investigate the relationship between Piagetian theory (classificational reasoning abilities that emphasize the tacit use of metalinguistic concepts), and reading acquisition (word recognition and reading comprehension). Twenty-four second and third grade remedial…

Response to intervention (RTI) must be combined with comprehensive cognitive assessment to identify children with learning disabilities. This article presents the Cognitive Hypothesis Testing (CHT) model for integrating RTI and comprehensive evaluation practices in the identification of children with reading disabilities. The CHT model utilizes a…

The hypothesis that gains in reading performance occurring among dyslexic children during individually paced reading are partially attributable to changes in short-term memory processing was tested with 23 elementary school students. Findings provide support for a causal role for short-term memory functioning in text processing. (SLD)

This study evaluated a model of reading skills among early adolescents (N=174). Measures of family history, achievement, cognitive processes and self-perceptions of abilities were obtained. Significant relationships were found between family history and children's single-word reading skills, spelling, reading comprehension, orthographic processing…

Critical variables that underlie the performance of a national sample of young adults on a diverse set of document literacy tasks were identified. The final sample was 3,618 adults. The identification of these variables provides an important first step toward building a theoretical model that would systematically account for the constructs of…