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Little is known about the academic processing speed (i.e., rapid automatic naming and academic fluency) of children and adolescents with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) served in public school settings. A crosssectional design was used to investigate the (a) percentage of K-12 students with EBD served in public school settings with academic processing speed deficits; (b) mean level and stability of academic processing speed exhibited by K-12 students with EBD served in public school settings; (c) differences in the academic skills, 1Q, social adjustment, and language skills of students with and without processing speed deficits; and (d) the relative contribution of academic processing speed, academic skills, and language to the prediction of the social adjustment problems (i.e., total, externalizing, internalizing, and attention). Results indicated that: (a) a majority of the sample (57%) of students with EBD exhibited academic processing speed deficits; (b) the overall academic fluency standard score was more than three-fourths of a standard deviation below the mean for the norm group; (c) statistically significant differences were found between students with and without processing speed deficits across IQ, language, academic achievement, and social adjustment measures; and (d) with one exception (i.e., internalizing problems), academic fluency predicted all social adjustment domains and predicted total and attention problems above and beyond language or academic skills. Limitations, implications, and areas of future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although fundamental beginning reading skills are highly related to later reading success (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000), it remains unclear how these beginning reading skills impact the social adjustment of kindergarten through second grade children. Therefore, the purposes of this study were: (a) to examine the strength of the relationship between beginning reading skills (i.e., letter-word identification, word attack, passage comprehension, and auditory comprehension) and social adjustment (i.e., social skills, problem behaviors, and academic competence); and (b) to assess the beginning reading skills that predict the social adjustment of elementary aged public school children (K-2). A range of significant correlations was present between measures of beginning reading skills and ratings of social adjustment. In general, early literacy skills and skills of auditory comprehension were significantly and positively associated with measures of social skills and academic competence. In addition, early literacy skills and vocabulary were negatively associated with measures of problem behaviors. Letter-word identification was the best predictor of social skills (? = .41), problem behaviors (?= -.31), and academic competence (? = .66). In addition, vocabulary (?= .17) and overall auditory comprehension (? = .18) predicted social skills and academic competence, respectively. Findings, limitations, and future research needs are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]