Arithmetic word problem (AWP) solving is a highly demanding task for children with learning disabilities (LD) since verbal and mathematical information have to be integrated. This study examines specifically how syntactic awareness (SA), the ability to manage the grammatical structures of language, affects AWP solving. Three groups of children in…

Language performance at syntactic, semantic, orthographic, and discourse levels was measured for 12 learning disabled third graders, 15 normally achieving third graders, and 11 normally achieving first graders. Results indicated significant overall differences between learning disabled and normally achieving Ss, but not between the learning…

The study examined whether college students (35 normally achieving writers, 35 writers with learning disabilities, and 35 underprepared writers) differed in their ability to utilize the semantic roles and syntactic rules needed to apply cohesive referencing in written text. Among findings were that all groups made effective use of pronoun…

The article describes the Diagnostic Evaluation of Writing Skills (DEWS), a diagnostic teaching tool containing criteria of assessment to determine a student's deficiencies in reading and writing. (DLS)

To determine whether the auditory difficulties of learning disabled (LD) children are characterized by deficiencies in processing especially rapid or especially slow speech, the effect of various rates of compressed and expanded sentences on the repetition performance of 20 LD and normal children (ages 8 to 11 years) was investigated. (Author/DLS)

The effects of semantic and syntactic complexity on the reading comprehension of content-area prose were investigated among 92 adolescents with learning disabilities. Subjects who read passages that had been modified syntactically or both syntactically and semantically exhibited improved comprehension. Semantic modifications alone did not affect…

This study analyzed error recovery patterns based on eye movement measures of sentence parsing, across reading level and error type, in 10 adolescents with reading disabilities and 10 controls. The groups' error recovery strategies were similar in pattern and frequency; patterns were largely organized, strategic, and efficient; and multiple…