The Idea of an Essay, Volume 4

184 The Idea of an Essay: Volume 4 Figure 3: Connor (left) with his best friend, Devon (right). Results of Factor Skew In order to conclude whether or not these factors play a role in the abilities of a non-vocal child with CP regarding literacy, they must be studied. One study uses 28 children, 14 Swedish and 14 Irish, who have CP, in order to outline their abilities in different phonological tasks. After studying memory tasks, letter knowledge, reading tasks, and spelling tasks, no large correlations show up. There is large variability in groups in terms of school experience and age. Of all of the tests, phenome blending and deletion seemed to be the easiest. Scores on all of the reading tasks ranged from 0 to 100%. Spelling real words which were spoken orally proved to be the hardest task. Some students scored zero on all of the tasks, while others achieved 100% on every task (Larsson, Sandberg, & Smith, 2010). Comprehension Tests It is apparent that results in the multiple case studies reviewed here are largely varying. This does not mean, though, that Connor has a clear advantage for being a good reader (which he is) over other students who are younger, a different sex, or have different educational background. But how? It seems there must be some sort of factors involved in determining literacy levels of these children, many of whom have severe cerebral palsy, like Connor, but are not as good at reading. Another approach is to better understand the possibility of problems with the language comprehension tests used