EDUCATIONAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL MEASUREMENT
1980,40
THE RELATIONSHIP OF AN EARLY MEASURE OF
INTELLIGENCE TO THE ABILITY TO LEARN SIGHT
VOCABULARY WORDS AND TO LATER READING
ACHIEVEMENT
RALPH CIANFLONE
Seton Hill
THOMAS G. ZULLO
College
University
of
Pittsburgh
The Slosson Intelligence Test (SIT) was administered to a group
of kindergarten children. Scores were correlated with a measure of
Sight Vocabulary achievement in kindergarten and reading achievement (Stanford Achievement Test) scores at the end of the first and
second grade. Correlation coefficients involving the SIT ranged
from a low of .61 to a high of .87.
THE Slosson
Intelligence Test (SIT) (Slosson, 1963) was developed
provide a valid and reliable measure that can be administered in a
short period (approximately 10 to 20 minutes) by individuals not
trained in giving individualized tests of general intelligence or scholastic aptitude. Requiring no reading, the test is designed to be used with
young children who cannot as yet read. Slosson (1963) reported a meto
dian correlation of .92 between the SIT and the Stanford-Binet In-
telligence Scale (SBIS) (Terman and Merrill, 1960) for subjects ranging in age from four years to eighteen and above. Those findings were
reinforced by Armstrong and Mooney ( 1971 ) who obtained a correlation of .94 between the SBIS given by personnel qualified to administer it and the SIT administered by classroom teachers. Employing a
population of subjects with emotional impairments, Kaufman and
Ivanoff (1969) cited a correlation of .93 between the SIT and the
Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) (Wechsler, 1955). Martin
and Kidwell (1977) reported the correlation between the SIT and the
Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R) (Wechsler, 1974) to be .79, .82 and .50 for the Full, Verbal, and Performance
scales, respectively.
There appears to be a paucity of literature on the relationship be1197
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1198
EDUCATIONAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL MEASUREMENT
tween measures of
intelligence administered very early in childhood
and reading achievement. Lesiak (1977) found a correlation of .54 between the Cognitive Abilities Test, Primary I, Form I (IQ) (Thorndike, Hagen, and Lorge, 1974) administered at the beginning of first
grade and the total score from Lee-Clark Reading Tests, First Reader,
Form A (Lee and Clark, 1958) given at the end of first grade. Hartlage
and Steele (1977) administered the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for
Children (WISC) (Wechsler, 1949) in mid-second grade and the Wide
Range Achievement Test (WRAT) (Jastak and Bijou, 1946) six
months later and obtained correlations of .59 and .44 between the full
scale WISC and the (a) WRAT Reading and (b) WRAT Spelling subtest, respectively.
In an extensive study involving pre-school children, Durkin (1970)
found the correlation between the SBIS and the (a) number of letters
and (b) number of words children could identify at the end of a
Head Start Program to be .44 and .42, respectively. The correlation of
the SBIS with the same measures at the end of kindergarten were reported
as .26 and .49, respectively.
The purpose of this paper was to determine the
degree to which a
relatively easy-to-administer measure of intelligence (SIT) taken at
the kindergarten level correlated with (a) the acquisition of sight vocabulary and (b) later measures of reading achievement as measured
by the Stanford Achievement Test, Form B (SAT) (Madden, Gardner, Rudman, Karlsen, and Merwin, 1974).
Procedure
The subjects who comprised the original sample consisted of 108
children from two schools in an urban school district outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The SIT was administered to all pupils during
the first three weeks of their second semester in kindergarten. Immediately after the children had completed the (SIT), they were asked individually whether they were able to identify any of 63 sight vocabulary
words that had been selected from the Comprehensive Reading Vocabulary-Primary Level (CRV-PL) (Sartain, 1972). None of the children was able to identify any of the words. The pupils were then
&dquo;taught&dquo; the sight vocabulary words by a method that combined the
features of the phonic, kinesthetic, and meaningful context methods
(Cianflone, 1976). Twenty-four hours after two separate exposures to
the teaching procedure, children were asked to identify the vocabulary words. The number of words correctly identified constituted the
score for the sight vocabulary. SAT scores were obtained for the subtests of Reading, Vocabulary, and Word Study Skills at the end of
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1199
CIANFLONE AND ZULLO
(SAT-1) and second (SAT-2) grades.
able for 51of the original subjects.
first
Complete
data
were
avail-
{
,Results and ~~~~.~,~ion
Pearson
coefficients computed bethe SIT and scores on the SAT Reading, Vocabulary
and Work Study Skills subtests at the end of first grade were .77, .87
and .78 respectively. These coefficients exceeded the values reported
in the literature between measures of reading achievement and either
reading readiness tests or individualized intelligence tests. Correlations between the SIT scores and the corresponding SAT subtests at
the end of the second grade were .76, .79 and .61. Again these magnitudes, which represented a nearly two and one-half year time span,
exceeded most values previously reported that involved shorter time
periods. The correlation between the SIT and sight vocabulary scores
of .70 exceeded that found by Durkin (1970) who employed the SBIS.
(It must be noted, however, that Durkin measured Word Identincation over a longer period than that involved in this study). All correlation coefficients reported in the present study were statistically signincant at the .001 level.
The results of this investigation would tend to indicate the utility of
further investigations regarding the use of the SIT as a potential predictor of general reading achievement. Obviously, replication of this
product-moment correlation
tween scores on
study with other samples would provide needed cross-validation data.
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A
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EDUCATIONAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL MEASUREMENT
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