Formal and Informal Assessment for Dyslexia Flashcards

A student with suspected dyslexia scores at the 37th percentile on the CTOPP-2 Phonological Awareness composite but at the 3rd percentile on both Rapid Digit Naming and Rapid Letter Naming subtests. The evaluator concludes dyslexia is absent because phonological awareness is within normal limits. Which aspect of this evaluation is MOST critically flawed?

Answer: The evaluator did not consider that isolated RAN deficits constitute a distinct pathway to reading difficulty under the double-deficit hypothesis

The double-deficit hypothesis (Wolf & Bowers) identifies rapid automatized naming (RAN) as an independent second core deficit in dyslexia, separate from phonological processing. A student with a severe isolated RAN deficit (3rd percentile on both symbolic naming subtests) can have dyslexia even with intact phonological awareness. The evaluator's critical error was equating dyslexia exclusively with phonological deficits, failing to recognize the RAN-deficit subtype that is often associated with worse fluency outcomes than phonological deficits alone.

A 4th-grade student produces the following informal spelling errors: 'driv' for 'drive,' 'hopt' for 'hoped,' 'dreem' for 'dream,' and 'sed' for 'said.' The student consistently applies letter-sound correspondences but fails to use morphological markers and vowel-team patterns. Which statement BEST characterizes this profile for differential diagnostic purposes?

Answer: This pattern places the student in the Within-Word Pattern stage of spelling development, indicating failure to internalize orthographic patterns beyond basic phonics

These errors — phonetically plausible but orthographically incorrect, with omitted long-vowel markers, vowel teams, and morphological suffixes — place the student at the Within-Word Pattern stage of the developmental spelling continuum (Words Their Way framework). This is not 'surface dyslexia' in the formal clinical sense (which requires documented exception-word reading impairment on standardized tests) and is the opposite of deep dyslexia (which involves semantic substitutions, not phonological plausibility). The fact that spelling is phonetically plausible does NOT rule out dyslexia; it simply indicates which stage of orthographic knowledge has not been consolidated.

A 10-year-old scores at the 8th percentile on TOWRE-2 Phonemic Decoding Efficiency (PDE) but at the 38th percentile on TOWRE-2 Sight Word Efficiency (SWE), with CTOPP-2 Phonological Awareness at the 5th percentile. Which interpretation is MOST clinically accurate?

Answer: The profile is consistent with phonological dyslexia, in which nonword decoding is disproportionately impaired relative to sight word recognition

In phonological dyslexia, the core phonological processing deficit disproportionately impairs the ability to apply letter-sound correspondences to decode novel or nonwords (measured by PDE), while whole-word/orthographic memory for known sight words (SWE) may be relatively spared. A 5th-percentile CTOPP-2 PA composite combined with severely impaired PDE and relatively preserved SWE is a classic phonological dyslexia profile. Hyperlexia involves precocious word reading relative to comprehension in young children — not a subtest discrepancy pattern like this — and intact SWE does not rule out dyslexia when PDE and phonological awareness are severely impaired.

A CALT is evaluating a bilingual Spanish-English student whose English phonological awareness scores fall at the 12th percentile. Which informal assessment procedure would MOST effectively help distinguish a true phonological processing deficit from a language-difference effect?

Answer: Apply a dynamic assessment approach — test-teach-retest — targeting phonological awareness skills in the student's first language

Dynamic assessment (test-teach-retest) conducted in the student's strongest or first language is the most powerful method for separating a genuine neurological phonological deficit from limited English exposure. If a student fails to respond to brief, structured phonological awareness instruction even in their L1, that strongly implicates an underlying processing deficit rather than a language-difference effect. Error analysis across languages (Choice D) can be informative but is less diagnostic, because similar errors may reflect cross-linguistic orthographic transfer rather than a true deficit. Nonword repetition in English (Choice A) still carries an English-language advantage for more proficient speakers and does not isolate the language-difference variable as cleanly.

A student obtains a standard score of 78 on a formal word reading measure. The reported 95% confidence interval is 72–84. Which statement BEST reflects psychometrically sound interpretation of this result for eligibility purposes?

Answer: The 95% confidence interval indicates there is a 95% probability that the student's true score falls between 72 and 84, and this range should inform eligibility decisions alongside all other assessment data

A 95% confidence interval means that if the test were administered 100 times under equivalent conditions, approximately 95 of those resulting intervals would contain the student's true score. The obtained score of 78 is the best single-point estimate, but the true score could reasonably fall anywhere from 72 to 84. Eligibility decisions must consider this range of uncertainty alongside error patterns, processing data, and clinical judgment — not a single cutoff score. The confidence interval overlapping with 85 does NOT mean the student 'cannot' be classified; it means the evaluator must use clinical interpretation holistically. A single standard score, in either direction, never determines eligibility alone.

A student with documented dyslexia has received structured literacy intervention for 18 months. CBM oral reading fluency probes show no significant growth over the past 6 months, but informal error analysis of the same reading passages shows clear improvement in phonological decoding accuracy. Which explanation MOST likely accounts for this discrepancy?

Answer: CBM fluency probes may not be sensitive to accuracy-based gains, as automaticity and fluency typically lag behind accuracy development in structured literacy progression

In structured literacy intervention for dyslexia, accuracy consolidation reliably precedes automaticity development — a student must accurately apply decoding skills before those skills can become fluent. CBM oral reading fluency captures words read correctly per minute but is not sensitive to the accuracy-level improvements that occur earlier in the intervention arc. This can produce a flatline on fluency probes even when meaningful progress is occurring. This does NOT mean the intervention is ineffective; it means the measurement tool is not capturing the current dimension of growth. Adjusting the probe level, adding accuracy-focused CBM variants, or supplementing with informal error analysis addresses this gap. Accuracy and fluency are not independent — fluency develops from consolidated accuracy.