Primary school teachers rated the frequency of occurrence of 65 reading-related behavioural characteristics in a sample of 251 Grade 1 to Grade 6 Chinese school children in Hong Kong. These behavioural characteristics were in the areas of general performance, reading, dictation, writing, mathematics, language, memory, concentration, sequential ability, motor co-ordination, spatial orientation, and social/emotional adjustment. Of these 12 areas, 10 yielded scale scores that could distinguish children with dyslexia from those without dyslexia, identified on the basis of their performance in five domains of literacy and cognitive skills. Using a summary score derived from the 10 relevant scales, an optimal cut-off score was suggested to arrive at a balance between high sensitivity and an acceptable rate of false positives in screening for children with dyslexia. The need for cross-replication in screening children with dyslexia using the behaviour checklist with different samples of school students is emphasised.
[Copyright of Educational Psychology is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0144341042000271769]

Based on the data of the normative study of the Hong Kong test of specific learning difficulties in reading and writing, and the Test of visual-perceptual skills (non-motor) - Revised, 99 children aged between 6 and 10½ years were identified as children with dyslexia out of the normative sample of 690 children. By excluding 12 children known to score below average in IQ, 87 children, including 20 children not tested for IQ, could be regarded as children with dyslexia, yielding a prevalence rate of 12.6% and a boy:girl gender ratio of 1.6 to 1. The figures would become 9.7% and 2.0 to 1 if the 20 children were omitted from computation. However, gender imbalance could not be readily explained by gender differences in reading-related cognitive abilities, as there were only minor and subtle differences. Regression analyses to evaluate the relative contribution of different cognitive abilities to reading and writing suggested that orthographic knowledge and naming speed were most important among children with dyslexia. Implications of the findings and the need for early intervention are discussed.
[Copyright of Educational Studies is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03055690601068535]

Based on the data of a school-referred sample of Cantonese-speaking Chinese children who met the Hong Kong criterion of dyslexia, the authors estimated for developmental dyslexia of Chinese children aged between 6 and 10 in Hong Kong an incidence rate of 0.66 percent and a gender ratio of 3.29 boys to 1 girl over a four-year period. They also explored the differences in estimates based on this Hong Kong criterion that emphasizes cognitive markers with more conventional discrepancy- based criteria. In view of the possible biases in self-selection and underreporting in the data of the school-referred sample, the authors compared the figures with those derived from the sample of the normative study of the Hong Kong Test of Specific Learning Difficulties in Reading and Writing, which yielded an estimate of 9.7 percent in prevalence rate and boy-girl gender ratio of 2 to 1 over a one- year period. The differences in estimates based on the two samples and implications of the findings are discussed in light of the limitations of the study.
[Copyright of Australian Journal of Learning Difficulties is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19404150802093695]

Background This study examined the effects of different approaches to teaching learners with mild intellectual disabilities to solve mathematical word problems. Method Thirty Chinese students with mild intellectual disabilities from a special school in Hong Kong were taught using conventional instruction, worked example instruction, and cognitive strategy instruction. A cross‐subjects experimental design was used to compare the effects of the three instructional approaches on immediate and delayed tests. Results Students presented with worked example and cognitive strategy instruction solved more problems correctly and generally outperformed students presented with conventional instruction in both immediate and delayed tests. In addition, learners receiving worked example and cognitive strategy instruction were more able to maintain and generalise their previous knowledge and skills to solve novel problems than those receiving conventional instruction. Conclusions The findings indicate that learners can profit from worked example and cognitive strategy instruction which can promote problem‐solving skills and mathematical learning.
[Copyright of Journal of Intellectual & Developmental Disability is the property of Informa Healthcare . Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13668250500349409]