The Effects of Psycholinguistic Training on Improving Psycholinguistic Skills

The practice of measuring and instructing learning disabled youngsters in psycholinguistic skills has for several years been under question. In numerous reviews of the effectiveness of such procedures, Hammill and Larsen (1974) noted that the efficacy of these approaches remained nonvalidated. Minskoff (1975) proposed several guidelines to be followed when conducting methodologically sound research on the efficacy of psycholinguistic training. The purpose of this study was to utilize Minskoff's criteria to determine if, in fact, psycholinguistic training would lead to improved psycholinguistic abilities in children. Although Minskoff's stringent criteria were followed, attempts to train psycholinguistic abilities proved unsuccessful.