Lynne Vernon-Feagans - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Lynne Vernon-Feagans

Research paper thumbnail of The Effects of Daycare Intervention in the Preschool Years on the Narrative Skills of Poverty Children in Kindergarten

International Journal of Behavioral Development, 1994

The following study examined narrative skills in 89 poverty children, half of whom had received a... more The following study examined narrative skills in 89 poverty children, half of whom had received an infant daycare intervention (experimental) and half whom had not (control). At school entry these groups were split again with half of each group receiving school-age intervention. For each child in the sample, a child of the same sex in their classroom was chosen to form a local population sample (LPS). Children were read stories of varying thematic cohesiveness and asked both to comprehend and paraphrase the narratives in the fall and spring of the kindergarten year. The results indicated that the preschool experimental group performed better than the preschool control group on the comprehension and paraphrase of the stories in the fall but not in the spring. The LPS group was especially better able to paraphrase stories in comparison to the poverty groups. Discussion is centred on reasons for the convergence of the two poverty groups over kindergarten and the possible cultural diffe...

Research paper thumbnail of How demonstrated comprehension can get muddled in production

Developmental Psychology, 1981

The discourse skills of 31 low-income and 30 middle-income kindergarten children from the same cl... more The discourse skills of 31 low-income and 30 middle-income kindergarten children from the same classrooms were examined in two experiments. In each experiment a nonverbal demonstration of comprehension of the discourse material was assured before the children were asked to express that same material verbally to another. In Experiment 1 children were read stories that they acted out with props. When comprehension was assured they were asked to paraphrase the story to another. In Experiment 2 children were either shown or instructed verbally how to open an attractive box. When comprehension was assured they were asked to teach the "trick" to a blindfolded adult. Results from both experiments indicated that although it took the low-income children somewhat longer to comprehend the information, the greatest difference between the groups was in the ability to communicate information that they already knew. Lowincome children produced less relevant information on both tasks, although this did not appear to be related to linguistic complexity or sheer output.

Research paper thumbnail of Children's understanding of some temporal terms denoting order, duration, and simultaneity

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 1980

This study examined the comprehension by children of the concepts of order, duration, and simulta... more This study examined the comprehension by children of the concepts of order, duration, and simultaneity as reflected in certain linguistic structures. The children in the study were 3, 5, and 7 years old. Temporal order was examined through children's comprehension of two-clause sentences containing the conjunctions "after," "beJore," "since," and "until." Temporal duration was examined through children's understanding of one-clause sentences containing the progressive aspect and two-clause sentences containing the conjunctions "since" and "until." These two conjunctions signal duration in the main clause when they conjoin two clauses. Simultaneity was studied through children's comprehension of two-clause sentences containing "while." The results revealed that the order sentence structures (' 'before" and "after' ') were generally comprehended by the children before the duration or simultaneous sentence structures, although at 7 years of age children were still not performing above chance on the order relation in "since" and "'until" sentences. The duration sentence structures were comprehended by the children before the simultaneous sentence structures. The results support the literature in cognitive psychology and in philosophy which argues that order is simpler than duration is simpler than simultaneity.

Research paper thumbnail of Longitudinal Stability of LD Subtypes Based on Age- and IQ-Achievement Discrepancies

Learning Disability Quarterly, 1986

A twofold classification system based on discrepancy formulas was employed to subtype normal (NLD... more A twofold classification system based on discrepancy formulas was employed to subtype normal (NLD) and learning disabled (LD) children into educationally meaningful groups based upon simultaneous consideration of IQ-achievement and age-achievement discrepancies. 52 LD and 58 NLD children were classified into five groups: overachievers, target achievers, underachievers, slow learners, and disabled achievers. This classification system appeared useful by its ability to differentiate disabled learners, who were discrepant in reading achievement as predicted by both age and IQ, from slow learners, who were only discrepant in reading achievement as predicted by age. The longitudinal stability of the classification scheme was examined over a 3-year period. As expected, NLD students' achievement was more predictable over time than their LD peers' LD students became more disabled with age in spite of remedial services. The educational implications and theoretical relevance of discre...

Research paper thumbnail of Academic and Behavioral Characteristics of Learning Disabled Children and Average Achievers: Longitudinal Studies

Learning Disability Quarterly, 1984

Longitudinal research in the area of learning disabilities has been lacking for some time. The st... more Longitudinal research in the area of learning disabilities has been lacking for some time. The study reported here is an attempt to chart the development of newly identified LD children over the early elementary school years while they are receiving LD services in the public school. This paper includes initial behavioral and academic data for a large sample of 6- and 7-year-old LD and normally achieving students, and charts the progress of about half the children over a 3-year period using teacher rating scales, a classroom observational system, and an achievement test. Results of the study over the three years show that LD children fall progressively further behind their normal peers in reading comprehension. In math, they stay relatively the same distance below their peers. The LD subjects' behavior relative to that of their peers is suboptimal for classroom learning in the first year of the study, with less on-task and more off-task behavior — a pattern which continues over t...

Research paper thumbnail of Classroom Behavior of Learning Disabled Children

Learning Disability Quarterly, 1982

Teacher ratings and observational data were gathered on 22 pairs of LD and non-LD children in the... more Teacher ratings and observational data were gathered on 22 pairs of LD and non-LD children in the second and fourth grades in an effort to compare their task-oriented, social, and affective behavior patterns in regular class settings. Results indicated that task orientation was the primary dimension of adaptive behavior discriminating the groups for both measures. While LD and non-LD students were observed performing similar classroom activities during the same periods of the day, data on contextual settings suggested that LD students were more often placed in small groups than in individual or large-group settings. The consistency of findings across previous observational studies was noted as well as the importance of considering ecological factors of the classroom in future research and program planning.

Research paper thumbnail of Relationship of Middle Ear Disease in Early Childhood to Later Narrative and Attention Skills

Journal of Pediatric Psychology, 1987

... Lynne Feagans2 Pennsylvania State University Margaret Sanyal, Frederick Henderson, Albert Col... more ... Lynne Feagans2 Pennsylvania State University Margaret Sanyal, Frederick Henderson, Albert Collier, and Mark Appelbaum Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center, University of North Carolina ... 'This research was supported by Grant No. ...

Research paper thumbnail of Teacher Interaction with Learning-Disabled Children and Average Achievers

Journal of Pediatric Psychology, 1982

Page 1. Journal of Pediatric Psychology. Vol. 7. No. 3, 1982 Teacher Interaction with Learning-Di... more Page 1. Journal of Pediatric Psychology. Vol. 7. No. 3, 1982 Teacher Interaction with Learning-Disabled Children and Average Achievers1 Bruce Dorval, James D. McKinney,2 and Lynne Feagans Frank Porter Graham Child ...

Research paper thumbnail of Validation of language subtypes in learning disabled children

Journal of Educational Psychology, 1986

Research paper thumbnail of The generalizability of story grammar training across setting and tasks

Journal of Behavioral Education, 1992

ABSTRACT

Research paper thumbnail of The pattern of exceptionality across domains in learning disabled children

Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 1981

The purpose of this study was to examine the intellectual, academic and behavioral competencies i... more The purpose of this study was to examine the intellectual, academic and behavioral competencies in learning disabled and normally achieving children. Fifty-eight pairs of children (LD and non-LD) in first, second, and third grade were administered the WISC-R and the PLAT; were observed with the SCAN Observational System in their regular classroom; and had teachers who filled out the Classroom Behavior Inventory. Results indicated that the LD children performed less well on the WISC-R and the PLAT. There was no evidence of greater variability within the LD children nor was there a different pattern of performance in comparison to normally achieving children. The learning disabled children were consistently rated by their classroom teachers as displaying less desirable classroom behavior. The Observational System SCAN corroborated these results, indicating that LD children were more off-task than non-LD children. These results suggest that we reexamine the definition of learning disabilities in the public school to put more emphasis on behavioral indices and to refocus the interpretation of test scatter as an index of learning disabilities. The term "learning disability" was introduced in 1963 to describe a collection of disorders associated with poor school achievement which could not be attributed to sensory handicaps, mental retardation, emotional disturbance, or environmental disadvantage (Kirk, 1964; The National Advisory Committee on Handicapped Children, 1967). Over the past 15 years a variety of characteristics have been attributed to learning disabled children which were incorporated into various This research was supported by the Bureau of Education for the Handicapped Grant No. G-00-760-5224 given to James D. McKinney. Portions of the article are based upon a paper presented at the Gatlinburg Conference on Research in Mental Retardation/Developmental Disabilities, Gulf Shores, Alabama, 1979. The authors wish to thank Jennifer Ferguson and Charles K. Burnett for their help in the collection and analysis of the data and for many useful suggestions. Requests for reprints should be sent to Lynne Feagans,

Research paper thumbnail of The effects of intervention and social class on children's answers to concrete and abstract questions

Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 1991

Research paper thumbnail of The Effects of Day Care Intervetion on Teacher's Ratings of the Elementary School Discourse Skills in Disadvantaged Children

International Journal of Behavioral Development, 1995

The aim of this study was to assess whether a day care intervention programme for children from i... more The aim of this study was to assess whether a day care intervention programme for children from impoverished backgrounds could affect teacher's ratings GI their language use in the classroom in early elementary school. 'Ihwr cere 32k experimental children (who had received a day care intervention programme) and 36 control children in the initial study. At school entry, a comparison child from the same classroom was selected for each of the experimental and control children. The children were followed for three years in school. Besides collecting IQ and achievement data, teachers were asked to fill out the Adaptive Language Inventory (ALI) which measured children's use of language in narrative and discourse situations in the classroom. The results indicated that although the comparison group was rated more highly than the experimental and control group, the experimental group was rated more favourably than the control group over all three years on three of the four major ...

Research paper thumbnail of Referential communication and reading performance in learning disabled children over a 3-year period

Developmental Psychology, 1986

Research paper thumbnail of Developmental Differences in the Comprehension and Production of Narratives by Reading-Disabled and Normally Achieving Children

Child Development, 1984

Reading-disabled children's language skills have long been implicated in their poor schoo... more Reading-disabled children's language skills have long been implicated in their poor school performance. This study is a cross-sectional and longitudinal examination of the narrative language skills of both reading-disabled and normally achieving children in an attempt to understand more clearly the language processes involved in these skills and how these processes relate to reading achievement over time. Children were read scriptlike narratives and asked to demonstrate their knowledge of the story by a nonverbal enactment of the narrative. After perfect enactment of the story was assured, the children were asked to paraphrase the narratives. Results from both the cross-sectional and longitudinal study indicated that reading-disabled children comprehended the narratives in a comparable fashion to normal peers, but they performed more poorly on a variety of content and complexity measures derived from their paraphrases. The study indicates that reading-disabled children's language problems are persistent over time in the area of verbally expressing information, even when they have demonstrated nonverbal comprehension.

Research paper thumbnail of Observed Maternal Parenting Behaviors Measure

Research paper thumbnail of Rural Parenting: Cumulative Risk and Parenting Process

Springer eBooks, Oct 13, 2016

In this chapter, we describe the Family Life Project, a large-scale longitudinal study that chron... more In this chapter, we describe the Family Life Project, a large-scale longitudinal study that chronicles the lives of African American and non-African American children and their families living in two poor rural areas of the US: Appalachia and the Black South. The breadth of the Family Life Project data allows us to expand the previous literature on rural poverty and to highlight the notion that the effects of poverty are not limited to low levels of income, but are rather fused with several “correlated constraints” that co-occur with poverty: low maternal education, low job prestige, non-standard work hours, single parenthood, residential instability, and neighborhood safety. We use a cumulative risk perspective as a comprehensive way to describe the life in rural poverty and the disproportionate burden it puts on rural families as they navigate day-to-day life. We also look at two examples of parenting—the quality of mothers and fathers language input and the quality of mothers and fathers emotion talk—as we examine (1) parenting as a mediating link in the relation between cumulative risk and children’s literacy skills, and (2) the role of fathers in the process of child development.

Research paper thumbnail of Child Skills and Teacher Qualifications: Associations with Elementary Classroom Teachers’ Reading Instruction for Struggling Readers

Learning Disabilities Research and Practice, Apr 1, 2017

This study explored the extent to which kindergarten and first grade teachers provided individual... more This study explored the extent to which kindergarten and first grade teachers provided individualized reading instruction to struggling readers during a unique one-on-one reading instruction task. Three outcomes of teachers' instructional strategies were captured: codefocused strategies, meaning-focused strategies, and level of challenge. Child skills in decoding and vocabulary/oral language as well as teacher qualifications of education, experience, and knowledge of reading were examined in relation to the three instructional strategies. Multilevel analyses showed relationships between child skills and reading instructional strategies, with teachers generally using code-focused and meaning-focused strategies, as well as an appropriate level of challenge, with children who struggled less with early reading. Although teacher education was not associated with any of the reading instructional strategies, teacher experience and knowledge of reading was associated with meaning-based instruction and the level of challenge provided to struggling readers.

Research paper thumbnail of Mothers’ and Fathers’ Language Input from 6 to 36 Months in Rural Two-Parent-Families: Relations to children’s kindergarten achievement

Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 2019

Research has highlighted the role of parental language input during early childhood as a way to f... more Research has highlighted the role of parental language input during early childhood as a way to facilitate children's early vocabulary skills. However, few studies have examined the relationship between the specific features of both mothers' and fathers' early language input during a shared book experience and children's kindergarten achievement (i.e., vocabulary, literacy, and math). Using an economically and culturally diverse sample of 567 children from the Family Life Project, this study examined whether mothers' and fathers' number of different words, mean length of utterance, and wh-questions from 6 to 36 months predicted children's kindergarten achievement. Multiple regression models, examining mothers' and fathers' language separately and in combined models, indicated that both mothers' and fathers' language input was related with children's kindergarten achievement, beyond a host of demographic controls. In the combined models, mothers' mean length of utterance and wh-questions were significantly associated with vocabulary and their mean length of utterance was significantly associated with math outcomes in kindergarten. Fathers' mean length of utterance and wh-questions were significantly associated with vocabulary, and their wh-questions were significantly associated with math outcomes in kindergarten. Implications for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers are discussed.

Research paper thumbnail of Classroom Management Affects Literacy Development of Students With Emotional and Behavioral Disorders

Exceptional Children, Jul 30, 2016

Many children with behavior problems perform poorly academically and can disrupt regular classroo... more Many children with behavior problems perform poorly academically and can disrupt regular classroom instruction. Although good classroom management strategies can benefit children with behavior problems, it is not clear whether these students need consistently good classroom management across the early elementary school years to improve their academic performance. The current study examined the quality of classroom management from kindergarten through third grade experienced by children who were rated as exhibiting symptoms of emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) in the classroom to understand the cumulative effects in relationship to third-grade reading performance. Results indicated that higher-quality classroom management in the first 4 years of school was significantly related to higher scores on standardized measures of reading achievement in third grade for boys exhibiting EBD, but girls exhibiting EBD appeared unaffected by the quality of teachers’ classroom management during this same time. Practitioner implications and future research needs are discussed.

Research paper thumbnail of The Effects of Daycare Intervention in the Preschool Years on the Narrative Skills of Poverty Children in Kindergarten

International Journal of Behavioral Development, 1994

The following study examined narrative skills in 89 poverty children, half of whom had received a... more The following study examined narrative skills in 89 poverty children, half of whom had received an infant daycare intervention (experimental) and half whom had not (control). At school entry these groups were split again with half of each group receiving school-age intervention. For each child in the sample, a child of the same sex in their classroom was chosen to form a local population sample (LPS). Children were read stories of varying thematic cohesiveness and asked both to comprehend and paraphrase the narratives in the fall and spring of the kindergarten year. The results indicated that the preschool experimental group performed better than the preschool control group on the comprehension and paraphrase of the stories in the fall but not in the spring. The LPS group was especially better able to paraphrase stories in comparison to the poverty groups. Discussion is centred on reasons for the convergence of the two poverty groups over kindergarten and the possible cultural diffe...

Research paper thumbnail of How demonstrated comprehension can get muddled in production

Developmental Psychology, 1981

The discourse skills of 31 low-income and 30 middle-income kindergarten children from the same cl... more The discourse skills of 31 low-income and 30 middle-income kindergarten children from the same classrooms were examined in two experiments. In each experiment a nonverbal demonstration of comprehension of the discourse material was assured before the children were asked to express that same material verbally to another. In Experiment 1 children were read stories that they acted out with props. When comprehension was assured they were asked to paraphrase the story to another. In Experiment 2 children were either shown or instructed verbally how to open an attractive box. When comprehension was assured they were asked to teach the "trick" to a blindfolded adult. Results from both experiments indicated that although it took the low-income children somewhat longer to comprehend the information, the greatest difference between the groups was in the ability to communicate information that they already knew. Lowincome children produced less relevant information on both tasks, although this did not appear to be related to linguistic complexity or sheer output.

Research paper thumbnail of Children's understanding of some temporal terms denoting order, duration, and simultaneity

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 1980

This study examined the comprehension by children of the concepts of order, duration, and simulta... more This study examined the comprehension by children of the concepts of order, duration, and simultaneity as reflected in certain linguistic structures. The children in the study were 3, 5, and 7 years old. Temporal order was examined through children's comprehension of two-clause sentences containing the conjunctions "after," "beJore," "since," and "until." Temporal duration was examined through children's understanding of one-clause sentences containing the progressive aspect and two-clause sentences containing the conjunctions "since" and "until." These two conjunctions signal duration in the main clause when they conjoin two clauses. Simultaneity was studied through children's comprehension of two-clause sentences containing "while." The results revealed that the order sentence structures (' 'before" and "after' ') were generally comprehended by the children before the duration or simultaneous sentence structures, although at 7 years of age children were still not performing above chance on the order relation in "since" and "'until" sentences. The duration sentence structures were comprehended by the children before the simultaneous sentence structures. The results support the literature in cognitive psychology and in philosophy which argues that order is simpler than duration is simpler than simultaneity.

Research paper thumbnail of Longitudinal Stability of LD Subtypes Based on Age- and IQ-Achievement Discrepancies

Learning Disability Quarterly, 1986

A twofold classification system based on discrepancy formulas was employed to subtype normal (NLD... more A twofold classification system based on discrepancy formulas was employed to subtype normal (NLD) and learning disabled (LD) children into educationally meaningful groups based upon simultaneous consideration of IQ-achievement and age-achievement discrepancies. 52 LD and 58 NLD children were classified into five groups: overachievers, target achievers, underachievers, slow learners, and disabled achievers. This classification system appeared useful by its ability to differentiate disabled learners, who were discrepant in reading achievement as predicted by both age and IQ, from slow learners, who were only discrepant in reading achievement as predicted by age. The longitudinal stability of the classification scheme was examined over a 3-year period. As expected, NLD students' achievement was more predictable over time than their LD peers' LD students became more disabled with age in spite of remedial services. The educational implications and theoretical relevance of discre...

Research paper thumbnail of Academic and Behavioral Characteristics of Learning Disabled Children and Average Achievers: Longitudinal Studies

Learning Disability Quarterly, 1984

Longitudinal research in the area of learning disabilities has been lacking for some time. The st... more Longitudinal research in the area of learning disabilities has been lacking for some time. The study reported here is an attempt to chart the development of newly identified LD children over the early elementary school years while they are receiving LD services in the public school. This paper includes initial behavioral and academic data for a large sample of 6- and 7-year-old LD and normally achieving students, and charts the progress of about half the children over a 3-year period using teacher rating scales, a classroom observational system, and an achievement test. Results of the study over the three years show that LD children fall progressively further behind their normal peers in reading comprehension. In math, they stay relatively the same distance below their peers. The LD subjects' behavior relative to that of their peers is suboptimal for classroom learning in the first year of the study, with less on-task and more off-task behavior — a pattern which continues over t...

Research paper thumbnail of Classroom Behavior of Learning Disabled Children

Learning Disability Quarterly, 1982

Teacher ratings and observational data were gathered on 22 pairs of LD and non-LD children in the... more Teacher ratings and observational data were gathered on 22 pairs of LD and non-LD children in the second and fourth grades in an effort to compare their task-oriented, social, and affective behavior patterns in regular class settings. Results indicated that task orientation was the primary dimension of adaptive behavior discriminating the groups for both measures. While LD and non-LD students were observed performing similar classroom activities during the same periods of the day, data on contextual settings suggested that LD students were more often placed in small groups than in individual or large-group settings. The consistency of findings across previous observational studies was noted as well as the importance of considering ecological factors of the classroom in future research and program planning.

Research paper thumbnail of Relationship of Middle Ear Disease in Early Childhood to Later Narrative and Attention Skills

Journal of Pediatric Psychology, 1987

... Lynne Feagans2 Pennsylvania State University Margaret Sanyal, Frederick Henderson, Albert Col... more ... Lynne Feagans2 Pennsylvania State University Margaret Sanyal, Frederick Henderson, Albert Collier, and Mark Appelbaum Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center, University of North Carolina ... 'This research was supported by Grant No. ...

Research paper thumbnail of Teacher Interaction with Learning-Disabled Children and Average Achievers

Journal of Pediatric Psychology, 1982

Page 1. Journal of Pediatric Psychology. Vol. 7. No. 3, 1982 Teacher Interaction with Learning-Di... more Page 1. Journal of Pediatric Psychology. Vol. 7. No. 3, 1982 Teacher Interaction with Learning-Disabled Children and Average Achievers1 Bruce Dorval, James D. McKinney,2 and Lynne Feagans Frank Porter Graham Child ...

Research paper thumbnail of Validation of language subtypes in learning disabled children

Journal of Educational Psychology, 1986

Research paper thumbnail of The generalizability of story grammar training across setting and tasks

Journal of Behavioral Education, 1992

ABSTRACT

Research paper thumbnail of The pattern of exceptionality across domains in learning disabled children

Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 1981

The purpose of this study was to examine the intellectual, academic and behavioral competencies i... more The purpose of this study was to examine the intellectual, academic and behavioral competencies in learning disabled and normally achieving children. Fifty-eight pairs of children (LD and non-LD) in first, second, and third grade were administered the WISC-R and the PLAT; were observed with the SCAN Observational System in their regular classroom; and had teachers who filled out the Classroom Behavior Inventory. Results indicated that the LD children performed less well on the WISC-R and the PLAT. There was no evidence of greater variability within the LD children nor was there a different pattern of performance in comparison to normally achieving children. The learning disabled children were consistently rated by their classroom teachers as displaying less desirable classroom behavior. The Observational System SCAN corroborated these results, indicating that LD children were more off-task than non-LD children. These results suggest that we reexamine the definition of learning disabilities in the public school to put more emphasis on behavioral indices and to refocus the interpretation of test scatter as an index of learning disabilities. The term "learning disability" was introduced in 1963 to describe a collection of disorders associated with poor school achievement which could not be attributed to sensory handicaps, mental retardation, emotional disturbance, or environmental disadvantage (Kirk, 1964; The National Advisory Committee on Handicapped Children, 1967). Over the past 15 years a variety of characteristics have been attributed to learning disabled children which were incorporated into various This research was supported by the Bureau of Education for the Handicapped Grant No. G-00-760-5224 given to James D. McKinney. Portions of the article are based upon a paper presented at the Gatlinburg Conference on Research in Mental Retardation/Developmental Disabilities, Gulf Shores, Alabama, 1979. The authors wish to thank Jennifer Ferguson and Charles K. Burnett for their help in the collection and analysis of the data and for many useful suggestions. Requests for reprints should be sent to Lynne Feagans,

Research paper thumbnail of The effects of intervention and social class on children's answers to concrete and abstract questions

Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 1991

Research paper thumbnail of The Effects of Day Care Intervetion on Teacher's Ratings of the Elementary School Discourse Skills in Disadvantaged Children

International Journal of Behavioral Development, 1995

The aim of this study was to assess whether a day care intervention programme for children from i... more The aim of this study was to assess whether a day care intervention programme for children from impoverished backgrounds could affect teacher's ratings GI their language use in the classroom in early elementary school. 'Ihwr cere 32k experimental children (who had received a day care intervention programme) and 36 control children in the initial study. At school entry, a comparison child from the same classroom was selected for each of the experimental and control children. The children were followed for three years in school. Besides collecting IQ and achievement data, teachers were asked to fill out the Adaptive Language Inventory (ALI) which measured children's use of language in narrative and discourse situations in the classroom. The results indicated that although the comparison group was rated more highly than the experimental and control group, the experimental group was rated more favourably than the control group over all three years on three of the four major ...

Research paper thumbnail of Referential communication and reading performance in learning disabled children over a 3-year period

Developmental Psychology, 1986

Research paper thumbnail of Developmental Differences in the Comprehension and Production of Narratives by Reading-Disabled and Normally Achieving Children

Child Development, 1984

Reading-disabled children's language skills have long been implicated in their poor schoo... more Reading-disabled children's language skills have long been implicated in their poor school performance. This study is a cross-sectional and longitudinal examination of the narrative language skills of both reading-disabled and normally achieving children in an attempt to understand more clearly the language processes involved in these skills and how these processes relate to reading achievement over time. Children were read scriptlike narratives and asked to demonstrate their knowledge of the story by a nonverbal enactment of the narrative. After perfect enactment of the story was assured, the children were asked to paraphrase the narratives. Results from both the cross-sectional and longitudinal study indicated that reading-disabled children comprehended the narratives in a comparable fashion to normal peers, but they performed more poorly on a variety of content and complexity measures derived from their paraphrases. The study indicates that reading-disabled children's language problems are persistent over time in the area of verbally expressing information, even when they have demonstrated nonverbal comprehension.

Research paper thumbnail of Observed Maternal Parenting Behaviors Measure

Research paper thumbnail of Rural Parenting: Cumulative Risk and Parenting Process

Springer eBooks, Oct 13, 2016

In this chapter, we describe the Family Life Project, a large-scale longitudinal study that chron... more In this chapter, we describe the Family Life Project, a large-scale longitudinal study that chronicles the lives of African American and non-African American children and their families living in two poor rural areas of the US: Appalachia and the Black South. The breadth of the Family Life Project data allows us to expand the previous literature on rural poverty and to highlight the notion that the effects of poverty are not limited to low levels of income, but are rather fused with several “correlated constraints” that co-occur with poverty: low maternal education, low job prestige, non-standard work hours, single parenthood, residential instability, and neighborhood safety. We use a cumulative risk perspective as a comprehensive way to describe the life in rural poverty and the disproportionate burden it puts on rural families as they navigate day-to-day life. We also look at two examples of parenting—the quality of mothers and fathers language input and the quality of mothers and fathers emotion talk—as we examine (1) parenting as a mediating link in the relation between cumulative risk and children’s literacy skills, and (2) the role of fathers in the process of child development.

Research paper thumbnail of Child Skills and Teacher Qualifications: Associations with Elementary Classroom Teachers’ Reading Instruction for Struggling Readers

Learning Disabilities Research and Practice, Apr 1, 2017

This study explored the extent to which kindergarten and first grade teachers provided individual... more This study explored the extent to which kindergarten and first grade teachers provided individualized reading instruction to struggling readers during a unique one-on-one reading instruction task. Three outcomes of teachers' instructional strategies were captured: codefocused strategies, meaning-focused strategies, and level of challenge. Child skills in decoding and vocabulary/oral language as well as teacher qualifications of education, experience, and knowledge of reading were examined in relation to the three instructional strategies. Multilevel analyses showed relationships between child skills and reading instructional strategies, with teachers generally using code-focused and meaning-focused strategies, as well as an appropriate level of challenge, with children who struggled less with early reading. Although teacher education was not associated with any of the reading instructional strategies, teacher experience and knowledge of reading was associated with meaning-based instruction and the level of challenge provided to struggling readers.

Research paper thumbnail of Mothers’ and Fathers’ Language Input from 6 to 36 Months in Rural Two-Parent-Families: Relations to children’s kindergarten achievement

Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 2019

Research has highlighted the role of parental language input during early childhood as a way to f... more Research has highlighted the role of parental language input during early childhood as a way to facilitate children's early vocabulary skills. However, few studies have examined the relationship between the specific features of both mothers' and fathers' early language input during a shared book experience and children's kindergarten achievement (i.e., vocabulary, literacy, and math). Using an economically and culturally diverse sample of 567 children from the Family Life Project, this study examined whether mothers' and fathers' number of different words, mean length of utterance, and wh-questions from 6 to 36 months predicted children's kindergarten achievement. Multiple regression models, examining mothers' and fathers' language separately and in combined models, indicated that both mothers' and fathers' language input was related with children's kindergarten achievement, beyond a host of demographic controls. In the combined models, mothers' mean length of utterance and wh-questions were significantly associated with vocabulary and their mean length of utterance was significantly associated with math outcomes in kindergarten. Fathers' mean length of utterance and wh-questions were significantly associated with vocabulary, and their wh-questions were significantly associated with math outcomes in kindergarten. Implications for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers are discussed.

Research paper thumbnail of Classroom Management Affects Literacy Development of Students With Emotional and Behavioral Disorders

Exceptional Children, Jul 30, 2016

Many children with behavior problems perform poorly academically and can disrupt regular classroo... more Many children with behavior problems perform poorly academically and can disrupt regular classroom instruction. Although good classroom management strategies can benefit children with behavior problems, it is not clear whether these students need consistently good classroom management across the early elementary school years to improve their academic performance. The current study examined the quality of classroom management from kindergarten through third grade experienced by children who were rated as exhibiting symptoms of emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) in the classroom to understand the cumulative effects in relationship to third-grade reading performance. Results indicated that higher-quality classroom management in the first 4 years of school was significantly related to higher scores on standardized measures of reading achievement in third grade for boys exhibiting EBD, but girls exhibiting EBD appeared unaffected by the quality of teachers’ classroom management during this same time. Practitioner implications and future research needs are discussed.