A comparison study of learning disabled and regular students' ability to self-diagnose words using a computerized curriculum-based assessment system

The purpose of this study was to investigate children's ability to self-diagnose words in a computerized curriculum-based assessment system. Comparisons were made among children with teaming disabilities (LD) and their regular peers and between two self-diagnostic conditions: sight-words test and passage-reading test. Possible relationship between the children's working memory capacity and their self-diagnostic ability was also investigated. The findings indicate that the children with teaming disabilities can self-diagnose words quite accurately using such a system. The children with LD showed more heterogeneous self-diagnostic abilities than did the regular children. While the children with LD tended to over-estimate their self-diagnostic abilities, the regular children exhibited a "healthy skepticism effect" and under-estimated their abilities. Some relationship between the children's working memory capacity and their self-diagnostic ability was found. When the difficulty level of sight-words was at children's instructional level, the children with more efficient working memory self-diagnosed words better than did the children with less efficient working memory. On the other hand, no significant differences in self-diagnostic abilities among children were found when the difficulty level of sight-words was at their frustration level.