A Comparison of the Use of Orthographic Structure in Word Discrimination by Learning Disabled and Normal Children

A group of 45 learning disabled children and a group of 45 normal children were presented pairs of letter patterns. In each pair, one pattern was a word in English (orthographically legitimate) and the other was not (orthographically illegitimate). Children were asked to identify the pattern that “is most like a real word.” After twenty pairs had been given, the reading section of the Wide Range Achievement Test was administered. A significant difference was found between the learning disabled and normal groups in discriminating between orthographically legitimate and orthographically illegitimate pairs. Further, this ability to discriminate correlated with performance on the reading section of the Wide Range Achievement Test.