Monday, January 26, 2009

Some corrections on my postings about Michelle Dawson

I have been reading some stuff posted by Michelle Dawson on the leftbrain/rightbrain and on her TMOB board and I would like to offer some corrections and errors on my part that Michelle points out.

First off I would like to change my statement in the post about whether or not Michelle's work has been replicated. I am still not clear on whether or not Hayashi is a replication of Michelle's work or not. I have to concede I only read the abstract. I have not read the whole study. Based on reading the abstract it would seem that this was not in fact a replication but a different kind of study. I will have to read the entire study before making that definite determination. I should have said so in my previous post, I did not, I regrettably made that error. Michelle claims that I have misrepresented what the study is but she has not commented on whether or not Hayashi used the Wechsler as well as the Raven's. I would like to say I should have phrased my post on this subject better, and conceded that reading the abstract is not the same as reading the study. That is true as Michelle pointed out. I will attempt to locate the entire study that Joseph referred me to and will write in this post whether or not I was wrong.

Also, I apparently did not understand that the digit span test was not included in the newer edition of the Wechsler that Michelle used in her study. The references I cited were dated and apparently the Wechsler had not been revised at that time, so that is the explanation for the digit span not being used. I did not understand this, I apologize for that. However, I would still be curious as to how the percentiles stack up if the older version of the WISC were used with the digit span as autistics have been shown to score high on this test so I believe it to be a relevant issue as if the older Wechsler were given and a comparison with the Raven's were made it might provide some more significant information.

2 comments:

jypsy said...

You might want to point your readers to that "stuff posted by Michelle Dawson" you've been reading - it's HERE (Michelle's TMoB Board) and the comment section of THIS POST.

Unknown said...

Jonathan

I commend you for issuing these corrections and clarifications.