| This exploratory research study focused on the metacognitive abilities of gifted/LD students who possessed learning disabilities in different domains. It involved a descriptive case study of nine Caucasian boys in the 6th grade separated into three groups: three verbally gifted/LD subjects with reading disabilities, three verbally gifted/LD subjects without reading disabilities, and three non-gifted/LD subjects with reading disabilities. The purpose of the study was to see if gifted students who possessed a disability in reading would exert different metacomprehension than gifted students with a learning disability in an area other than reading.;Scores from the Weschler Intelligence Test for Children-Revised, recommendations from gifted coordinators, and state guidelines were used to identify subjects. Each student's reading ability was assessed by an informal reading inventory, the Woodcock Johnson Diagnostic Reading Battery, and the reading subtest of the Wide Range Achievement Test-Revised 3. Student profiles were created to show individual responses, including strengths and weaknesses in word decoding and reading comprehension. Two interviews and a questionnaire were used to assess metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive skill. One interview focused specifically on the metacognitive components of evaluation, planning, regulation, and conditional knowledge adapted from Jacobs and Paris' (1987) Index of Reading Awareness Questionnaire. The error-detection paradigm with a think aloud task were used to assess metacomprehension.;Gifted/LD subjects without reading disabilities displayed superior performance on metacognitive tasks. The subjects who were superior readers tended to exhibit more metacognitive knowledge and used more metacognitive strategies during the think aloud task. Conversely, those who were poorer readers exhibited less metacomprehension. Gifted/LD subjects with and without reading disabilities exhibited superior performance on tasks measuring metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive skill in comparison to their non-gifted/LD peers. The results from this study supported the speculation that metacomprehension is influenced by knowledge about the reading process, expertise in reading, and advanced cognitive ability. |
