Effectiveness of Battery to Assess Perceptual-Motor, Cognition, Linguistic, A Scholastic Skills for Early Identification of Children with Specific Reading Disorder
Nayanika Saha, Mouma Nag, Prasanta Kumar Roy, Lipika Bhattacharya, Pritha MukhopadhyayAbstract
Background:
Specific learning disorder (SLD) is characterized by a deficit in understanding or using spoken or written languages and skills of reading and mathematics. In India, currently SLD identification is based on achievement ability discrepancy that does not emphasize on underlying specific cognitive and linguistic abilities. The battery to assess Perceptual-motor, Cognitive, Language, and Scholastic skills (BAPCLS) developed by the authors (Mukhopadhyay
Method:
A comparative cross-sectional research design was used, where 24 Bengali-speaking English medium schoolchildren between the age range of 4.5 and 8.5 years were identified as “at risk” for SRD from a pool of 75 referred children based on the clinician’s evaluation using a list of basic skills by Brigance and NIMHANS SLD Index as appropriate. Another 89 demographically matched children without significant learning problems were identified from schools as the Normal Control (NC) group from a pool of 173 children. Children needed a minimum 2 years of schooling, and they were excluded if they had any history of seizure disorder or sensory impairment and were first-generation learners. All the children were individually administered on the BAPCLS. Binomial logistic regression was computed to evaluate the predictions of all the subdomains of BAPCLS in categorizing SRD and NC. The scores for each domain of BAPCLS were submitted for nonparametric Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve (ROC) analysis following the trapezoidal rule to obtain the age-based cutoff points for screening SRD from NC.
Results:
The two groups could be categorized accurately by 24 subdomains of BAPCLS. ROC analysis helped to classify the performances in each domain by providing an optimal cutoff for distinguishing SRD from NC.
Conclusion:
BAPCLS has been identified as an effective tool for early identification of Specific Reading Problems.