Comparison of memory skills in learning disabled, low-reading, and nondisabled adolescents

Concerns are raised regarding the samples used in studies of learning disabled children. In this study, subjects were 56 high school students; 10 exhibited perceptual or processing difficulties ("learning disabled"), 15 performed poorly on reading achievement tests ("low readers"), and 31 showed no scholastic problems ("nondisabled"). Scores of the three groups were compared on nine memory tasks involving either auditory or visual input and encompassing a wide variety of content (digits, pictures, related and unrelated words, paired-associates, or sentences). The nondisabled group performed significantly better than the learning disabled group on all but one of the tasks. The low readers' performance was similar to that of the learning disabled group for some tasks, but significantly different on other tasks, most notably on tasks involving visual factors. Implications for research with learning disabled populations are discussed.     

STIMULUS OVERSELECTIVITY IN LEARNING DISABLED CHILDREN

Stimulus overselectivity, a phenomenon exhibited by autistic and institutionalized retarded individuals, was examined in mildly handicapped and nonhandicapped public school children. Subjects were 16 young, educable mentally retarded, 16 learning disabled, 15 nonhandicapped first- and second-graders, and 16 older, educable retarded students. The children were trained on a 3-component visual discrimination task and then tested on individual elements to determine which element or elements were controlling subject responses. Nine of the young educable mentally retarded children and eight of the learning disabled students showed some overselectivity. The majority of overselective retarded children were controlled by only one of the three components of the training cue, whereas the majority of the overselective learning disabled children responded to the discrimination task on the basis of two of the three components. No overselectivity was exhibited by the nonhandicapped students. All three cue components were also functional in controlling the responding of 14 of the 16 older retarded students, but two children were under the control of only one cue. The research indicated that in terms of overselectivity, learning disabled children respond more like young, mildly retarded children than they do like nonhandicapped ones. The demonstration of stimulus overselectivity in a sizable portion of a learning disabled sample may have implications for a more empirically based approach to this handicapped population.     

Developmental recall lag in learning-disabled children: Perceptual deficit or verbal mediation deficiency?

To investigate the development of mediational deficiencies in verbal and non-verbal visual short-term memory of learning disabled children, the recall task of Atkinson, Hansen, and Bernback was administered to learning disabled children in two experimental conditions. In Experiment 1 no significant diferences on nonverbal short-term memory recall between normal and learning-disabled children were found. Similar recall responses (e.g., middle response bias, primacy effects, and recency effects) were found for both groups. Non-verbal recall was comparable for disabled and normal children as suggested by stimulus content and association scores/. Experiment 2 found that while the effects of overt rehearsal on pretrained labels on learning disabled children's recall was negligible, labels provided superior recall for normal children. Results suggested that learning disabled children suffer from a verbal mediational deficiency consistent with Flavell's (1970) mediation deficiency hypothesis.The research herein was supported by a faculty research grant at the University of Northern Colorado. Appreciation is due to the Albuquerque (New Mexico) Public School System and the Richland 1 School District, Columbia, South Carolina.     

学习不良儿童元记忆监测与控制的发展

采用2×3×2的混合设计,在自定步调和对项目逐项评定的学习条件下,对小学四~六年级学习不良儿童的元记忆监测与时间分配策略进行了实验研究。结果表明：在对学习材料难度的有效区分上,学习不良儿童与对照组儿童间无差异,不论学习不良组还是对照组,四年级儿童均不能对实验中配对学习材料难度性质做出明确区分,五、六年级儿童能够很好的区分学习材料难度;在学习判断水平上,五、六年级学习不良儿童均低于对照组儿童,四年级两组之间无差异;从对不同难度学习材料的时间分配来看,四年级学习不良儿童与对照组儿童分配在不同难度材料上的学习时间均无显著差别。五、六年级对照组儿童能够根据学习材料的不同难度分配不同学习时间,而且学习时间分配与难度判断之间存在显著相关。五、六年级学习不良儿童能在一定程度上根据学习材料的不同难度分配不同的学习时间,但这种时间分配与难度判断之间相关未达到显著水平,提示他们尚不能在有效元记忆监测基础上对不同难度学习材料进行合理的时间分配     

学习不良儿童的策略信念与理解水平

使用结构访谈法对120名儿童(其中学习不良儿童60名)的策略信念与策略理解水平进行了研究。结果显示:学习不良儿童组与一般儿童组的差异更多体现在对具体策略的元认知因果解释水平上,他们更多持有较低水平的“信息获得”解释,而对照组儿童则更多持有较高水平的“信息加工”解释,提示对策略理解水平的差异可能是导致学习不良儿童难以将新学到的策略主动应用到其它情景中去的一个重要原因。     

Vision and academic performance of learning disabled children

The purpose of this study was to assess difference in academic performance among myopic, hyperopic, and emmetropic children who were learning disabled. More specifically, myopic children were expected to perform better on mathematical and spatial tasks than would hyperopic ones and that hyperopic and emmetropic children would perform better on verbal measures than would myopic ones. For 439 learning disabled students visual anomalies were determined via a Generated Retinal Reflex Image Screening System. Test data were obtained from school files. Partial support for the hypothesis was obtained. Myopic learning disabled children outperformed hyperopic and emmetropic children on the Key Math test. Myopic children scored better than hyperopic children on the WRAT Reading subtest and on the Durrell Analysis of Reading Difficulty Oral Reading Comprehension, Oral Rate, Flashword, and Spelling subtests, and on the Key Math Measurement and Total Scores. Severity of refractive error significantly affected the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children--Revised Full Scale, Performance Scale, Verbal Scale, and Digit Span scores but did not affect any academic test scores. Several other findings were also reported. Those with nonametropic problems scored higher than those without problems on the Key Math Time subtest. Implications supportive of the theories of Benbow and Benbow and Geschwind and Behan were stated.     

Depression and achievement in subgroups of children with learning disabilities

Eighty-five learning disabled children were assigned to four subgroups and administered measures designed to assess the relationship between depression and academic achievement. As a group, these children were more depressed than nondisabled children. The subgroups, which were identified as learning disabled only, learning disabled with low IQ, learning disabled with socio-emotional disturbance, and learning disabled with hyperactivity, did not differ in magnitude of depression; however, the relationships between depression and achievement and IQ were substantially different in each subgroup. For the two largest subgroups, learning disabled only and learning disabled with socio-emotional disturbance, it was suggested that depression is the consequence of learning failure in the former and a possible cause of learning failure in the latter. These findings underscore the importance of depression, a heretofore neglected variable, for the understanding and remediation of learning disabilities.     

Allocation of study time and recall by learning disabled and nondisabled children of different ages

Study time and recall by learning-disabled and nondisabled children of five different ages were examined in a task requiring recall of digits that were presented at the child's own rate. Recall increased with age and was significantly higher by nondisabled than disabled children, particularly at older ages. As additional digits of each sequence were presented, study time by 8-year-old disabled and nondisabled groups were relatively constant, increased in older disabled and nondisabled children, but increased more in older nondisabled children than older learning disabled children. Instructions in hierarchical grouping of digits increased recall by all groups to a similar degree, but the increase by younger children and learning disabled children was associated with longer study times. The results suggest that allocation of study time and recall are developmentally delayed in learning disabled children.     

Learning disabilities, distinctive encoding, and hemispheric resources

The purpose of this study was to isolate possible sources of learning ability differences in distinctive encoding of item-specific and relational information. Two mechanisms postulated as underlying ability group differences were attentional capacity (as inferred from the magnitude and direction of correlations between primary and secondary recall) and resource monitoring strategies (as reflected in measures of selective attention and laterality). In Experiment 1, learning disabled and nondisabled childrens' word recall was compared on dichotic listening recall tasks that included nonorienting instructions, and orienting instructions that directed children's attention toward semantic, phonemic, or structural word features. Disabled children showed lower recall and more diffuse selective attention to word features than nondisabled children. Reciprocity (negative correlations) between targeted and background words within and between ability groups was comparable, except when targeted word features were phonemically organized. Experiment 2 indicated that disabled childrens' cued recall was inferior to that of nondisabled children, even though both ability groups produced comparable symmetrical recall patterns related to ear presentations. Taken together, the results suggest that the locus of disabled childrens' distinctive encoding deficiencies is related to resource monitoring strategies during interhemispheric processing.     

Dynamic balance of learning disabled and nondisabled children

This investigation assessed a difference in the dynamic balance abilities of 30 learning disabled and 30 nondisabled children of elementary-school age. Only distance traveled across the beam, a novel task, was significantly different between groups; no other effects were significant. Nondisabled subjects traveled further across the beam before losing balance than learning disabled children.     

Motor and cognitive proficiency of learning disabled and normal children

Motor and cognitive skills of learning disabled (N = 32) and normal (N = 32) boys were compared on the Modified Lincoln-Oseretsky Motor Development Scale and on the WISC-R Vocabulary and Block Design subtests. Eight learning disabled and eight normal boys were tested at four age levels from 8 to 11 years. All boys were of normal intelligence. Motor and cognitive skills of the learning disabled boys were significantly below those of the normal boys and below those of the normative group. Chronological age was not a significant factor in relationship to either motor or cognitive skills. Intercorrelations indicated that in the learning disabled group Block Design, but not Vocabulary, was significantly related to motor scores at the 8- and 9-year ages. These results suggest that a common factor relating to perceptual-motor coordination and efficiency may be involved on the Lincoln-Oseretsky and Block Design subtest for young learning disabled children but not for older learning disabled children or for normal children.     

The Slingerland Screening Tests for identifying children with specific language disability: screening for learning disabilities in first grade

The responses on the Slingerland tests of 29 learning disabled and 11 nondisabled children in Grade 1 distinguished the two groups, except for copying (near vision). Copying (far vision) and auditory, visual, and kinesthetic perception and discrimination together were the strongest predictors of group membership.     

Syntactic decoding times of learning disabled children

Syntactic decoding reaction times of 20 learning disabled children comprising two groups of subjects (mean age of 8 and 13 yr., respectively) were compared to the responses of normal controls matched for age and sex. An analysis of variance procedure showed that the learning disabled children and their normal peers did not differ significantly in responses to the experimental stimuli. This held true regardless of linguistic complexity, suggesting that delays in processing elementary syntactic constructions are not a concomitant of learning disabilities.     

Responses of normal and learning disabled children as a function of the stopwatch in the matching familiar figures testing situation

To ascertain whether normal and hyperactive learning disabled children differ in their responses to Kagan's Matching Familiar Figures Test (MFF) as a function of a temporal cue, the stopwatch used in the testing situation, 16 learning disabled and 15 normal 8- and 9-year-old boys were compared. A counterbalanced design, in which each child was administered one-half of the test with a stopwatch (standard administration procedure) and the other one-half of the test without a stopwatch (No-Stopwatch procedure), was used. For the normal children, the MFF latency scores in the two conditions were not correlated, indicating that the stopwatch influenced their performance. For the learning disabled children, however, the MFF latency scores in the two conditions were correlated. A significant difference between the two correlation coefficients indicated that the normal and learning disabled children responded in a different manner to the temporal cue. On the MFF error measure, the correlation between the scores obtained in the two conditions of test administration was significant for the normal children, but not for the learning disabled children. A significant difference between these correlation coefficients again indicated differential responding to the temporal cue by the two groups.     

The Relationship of Korean Students’ Age and Years of English-as-a-Foreign-Language Exposure with English-Reading Ability: A Cross-Age Study

The differences in spelling error features among learning disabled and normal students spelling instructionally on four grade levels of achievement were investigated. The categories of errors were determined by invented spelling research. The results indicated that the ranking of error features for each group were significantly correlated, and that the range of individual variation about the mean group pattern of spelling error variables was highly similar at each level of achievement. The findings are congruent with the theory of developmental word knowledge and support the position that learning disabled and normally achieving children acquire specific aspects of English orthography in highly similar progressions.     

The Relationship Between Spirituality and Eysenck's Personality Dimensions: A Replication Among English Adults

A serial recall task was used to compare performance of 15 normal and 15 learning disabled elementary school children matched on CA, IQ, and sex with two and three dimensional representations of nonverbal eight-point shapes. Two a priori assumptions were not supported: (a) no differences in recall were found between groups and (b) no differences in recall were found for either group using two or three dimensional stimuli. Three imensional stimuli did facilitate visual rehearsal at the primacy position for both groups. Learning disabled children's performance was consistent with the mediation deficiency hypothesis found with normal children.     

Assessment of Reading and Learning Disabilities A Research-Based Intervention-Oriented Approach

Assessment practices for children with learning disabilities (LD) in reading are driven by the three primary components of the federal definition of LD: discrepancy, heterogeneity, and exclusion. This article reviews the implications of these three components for the assessment of children with reading disabilities and other forms of LD. We propose a rationale and procedures for more efficient approaches to the identification of children as learning disabled in reading or at-risk for these disabilities that are aligned with research on reading disabilities and other forms of LD. This approach emphasizes the assessment of academic skills and their components in an effort to develop intervention plans. Intelligence tests are not necessary for the identification of children as learning disabled and do not contribute to intervention planning.     

Comparison of the Luria-Nebraska Neuropsychological Battery-Children's Revision and the WISC-R with learning disabled children

This investigation concerned the relationship between the Luria-Nebraska Neuropsychological Battery--Children's Revision and the WISC--R for a sample of 32 children identified as learning disabled. The children's mean age was 9 yr., 11 mo.; they were identified as learning disabled on the basis of ability (WISC--R)/achievement discrepancy test scores. The sample was of low average intellectual ability according to the WISC--R and the Luria-Nebraska T-scores. Intercorrelations between scores on the WISC--R and Luria-Nebraska lists were generally nonsignificant, with the exception of language and arithmetic measures on each test. Also, 84% or 27 of the present sample of 32 were correctly identified as learning disabled using a criterion of three or more Luria-Nebraska subscale scores greater than one SD above the mean.     

Reading deficits and intellectual patterns among children with neurocognitive dysfunctions

Reading deficits among 56 elementary aged learning disabled children with suspected neurocognitive dysfunctions were calculated. The children were grouped according to the following IQ profiles: low Verbal-high Performance, high Verbal-low Performance, and a no-difference group. Differences in reading deficits among the groups were analyzed and the results indicate that the pattern of high Verbal-low Performance IQs is associated with the least deficiency in reading and that this association is evident as early as second grade within a group of learning disabled children with concomitant central processing problems.