Longitudinal Study of Cognitive Abilities and Academic Achievement

Abstract

Assessment was made of the effectiveness of a battery of cognitive tests administered in kindergarten in the prediction of sixth grade achievement in reading comprehension, spelling, language usage, and arithmetic. Cognitive abilities included several factors of intelligence, visual perception and visual sequential memory, visual-motor integration, and auditory perception and auditory sequential memory. Measures of prior learning were also included. Subjects were 58 children in a suburban public school district. A criterion for predictive utility for correlation coefficients was established, and simple correlation coefficients for various kindergarten measures and sixth grade achievement ranged from the criterion of .35 to .69. In partial correlations with the effects of ability to understand ideas expressed in words removed, correlation coefficients for various cognitive measures and achievement tests ranged from the criterion of .35 to .63. Combinations of kindergarten measures having optimal multiple correlations with later school achievement generally approached or exceeded .70. These findings are discussed and suggestions are made for further research.