Reading.

Psychological theories have long had a pronounced effect on the diagnosis and instruction of children with learning problems. Traditional theorists emphasized the centrality of global processes assumed to be common to most if not all cognitive tasks. These processes were quite distant from thosa involved in traditional academic activities, making it difficult to proceed from diagnosis to instruction. In contrast, contemporary theorists concentrate on identifying the specific knowledge and skills underlying performance in academically relevant fields such as reading, writing, mathematics, and science. This trend toward domain specificity has made the task of diagnosis and remediation of school problems more tractable, as the processes thus identified are those needed for successful performance. At the same time, alternative methods of diagnosis, such as dynamic assessment, have been deIeloped t