THE CONCEPT FORMATION PERFORMANCE OF ACHIEVING AND NON-ACHIEVING READERS IN THE FIRST, SECOND, THIRD AND FIFTH GRADE

The major purposes of this study are to determine if there are any differences in the ability of high intelligence and average intelligence achieving readers and high intelligence and average intelligence non-achieving readers to form concepts, and to respond at concrete, functional and abstract levels and in their tendencies to be rigid or flexible when presented with a new conceptual task. Subjects for this study were classified as achieving and non-achieving readers depending on their performance on both an informal and a standardized measure of reading. The subjects were selected from the first, second, third and fifth grade population of an urban school district in the Mid-Atlantic states. The final sample consisted of 25 achieving and 25 non-achieving readers from each grade level who were divided into four groups according to intelligence. The Gelb-Goldstein-Weigl-Scheerer Object Sorting Test (1941) and the Gelb-Weigl-Scheerer Color Form Sorting Test (1941) were used to measure performance concept formation. The Similarities subtest of the WISC (1949) was used to measure verbal concept formation.;Results. Within the limitations of this investigation, the groups of achieving and non-achieving readers in the first, second, third and fifth grades did not differ statistically on the verbal and performance measures of concept formation employed in this study. Therefore, the basic hypotheses were not rejected.;Conclusions. Within each grade the groups of achieving and non-achieving readers, grouped according to intelligence, seem to be more alike than different in terms of their concept formation when the results of their responses were analyzed statistically. Noteworthy trends were found, however, that suggest that differences exist between achieving and non-achieving readers in their ability to form concepts and in their ability to conceptualize at levels measured in this investigation that may be of practical value.;Object Sorting Test. (1) Achieving readers in all of the grades tend to make conceptualizations on the abstract level more frequently than do non-achieving readers who tend to make conceptualizations on the concrete level more frequently than do achieving readers. (2) The non-achieving readers in all of the grades tend to make incorrect sortings of objects and give incorrect verbalizations for their sortings more frequently than achieving readers.;Similarities subtest of the WISC. (1) The achieving readers in all of the grades tend to make conceptualizations on the abstract level more frequently than do non-achieving readers and the non-achieving readers in all of the grades tend to make conceptualizations on the concrete level more frequently than do achieving readers. (2) Achieving readers in the fifth grade tend to make correct verbalizations more frequently than non-achieving readers in the fifth grade.;Color Form Test. (1) Non-achieving readers tend to respond to the concrete aspects of each of the objects more frequently than achieving readers. (2) Achieving readers in the first, second and third grades tend to note the common characteristics of all of the objects more frequently than non-achieving readers. (3) Achieving readers in all of the grades were more flexible in shifting to a new method of grouping than non-achieving readers.