Identifying treatment resistors and the learner characteristics associated with children's responsiveness to early literacy intervention

This study investigated the manner in which children are identified as treatment resistors and the learner characteristics that predict responsiveness to treatment. Children, most of whom had received an intensive phonological awareness and alphabetic understanding intervention during kindergarten, were identified as at risk for reading difficulties in the winter of first grade (n = 32). They were administered an assessment battery in March that assessed the learner characteristics of phonological awareness, phonological memory, rapid naming, nonverbal ability, reading readiness, oral language, and behavior. The children were also assessed with reading outcome measures that examined reading accuracy and fluency at the word level and fluency with connected text. Twenty-one of the children remained at risk for reading difficulties and received a reading intervention for the remainder of the school year.; Children were first identified as treatment resistors if they performed below the 30th percentile at post-test. The measure of word reading accuracy identified fewer children as unresponsive than the word reading fluency measure (19% vs. 62%). The oral reading fluency measure identified most of the children as unresponsive to treatment (95%).; The learner characteristics correlated with growth in reading, and those found to account for growth varied by the reading outcome measure. Inattention and activity were significantly correlated with growth in word reading accuracy. Activity alone accounted for variation in growth for the accuracy composite. For word reading fluency, a phonological awareness task (elision) and a phonological memory task (repeating a series of numbers) were significantly correlated with growth. Vocabulary and phonological awareness measures, and the phonological memory composite, accounted for variation in growth on the fluency composite. A syntax task (repeating sentences), a phonological awareness task (elision), and inattention were significantly correlated with growth on the oral reading fluency measure. The growth curve analysis for oral reading fluency found that a phonological awareness measure and inattention accounted for variation in growth.