Teachers' and mothers' academic achievement expectations for learning disabled children

The present study investigated teachers and mothers academic achievement expectations for learning disabled and normally achieving grade 3 children. Both groups had similar WISC-R mean Full Scale IQ scores, ages and socioeconomic backgrounds. It was found that teachers and mothers had significantly lower academic expectations for learning disabled children. The results are discussed in terms of the importance of positive affective development for learning disabled children and the need for more encouraging attitudes on the part of teachers and parents.     

Classroom behavior and the academic progress of learning disabled students

A total of 43 learning disabled (LD) students who were identified in grades 1–3 were followed up in their second year of special education services. Teachers completed the Classroom Behavior Inventory (CBI) for each LD student and for randomly selected classmates, and both groups of students were observed with the SCAN system in regular classroom settings. Group differences in teacher perceived task orientation, independence, and verbal expressiveness replicated previous findings with the CBI for this LD sample. SCAN observations partially replicated previous results in that LD children interacted with teachers more often than classmates. Multiple regression analyses indicated that both measures of behavior were predictive of reading achievement during year 1 when the LD children were identified, and that the CBI predicted academic progress from one year to the next. Both teacher ratings and observational evidence converged on the importance of task-oriented behavior, independent functioning, and socially appropriate behavior in understanding the poor achievement of LD students.     

Reading deficits in learning disabled children

The purpose of this study was to determine whether LD children exhibited problems in the processes of attention, memory, or syntactical awareness when decoding written prose. Eighteen LD children and 18 normal controls were matched for initial word recognition skills. Subjects were then trained to read a list of individual words to criterion. Subsequently, they were tested on their ability to decode the same words in paragraph form, presented both immediately after training, and then again one week later. Half the children read paragraphs following standard English syntax, while the other half read a syntactically scrambled version of the same paragraph. The results indicated that a major contributing factor in the reading (decoding) difficulties demonstrated by the LD children derived from problems of acquisition and retrieval from long-term memory storage. The results were discussed in terms of their implications for the developmental lag theory of learning disabilities.     

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.     

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.     

Visual feature integration in learning disabled children

This study examined the ability of 7 learning disabled children to detect and integrate visual features in a complex display. While the learning disabled children performed more poorly over-all than 6 control children, differences between the two groups were most pronounced when subjects were required to conjoin or integrate visual features to make a decision about the presence of a target item. This finding is discussed with reference to automatic and attention-demanding components of visual perception.     

Variations in WISC-R patterns of learning disabled children

The WISC-R was administered to 19 learning disabled students at the time of diagnosis and following a period of time in special program placements. Group analyses indicated fluctuations between testing times in the Verbal and Full-Scale IQs and the V-P IQ discrepancies. Small but significant differences in Verbal, Performance and V-P scatter indices were observed at one or both testings in comparison to the normal standardization sample. Although the suggested group pattern for learning disabled children based on the Bannatyne categories was confirmed on both occasions, there was considerable variation for individual subjects.     

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.     

Naming of object-drawings by dyslexic and other learning disabled children

On the Oldfield-Wingfield Picture-Naming Test, sensitive to subtle chronic dysphasia in adults, dyslexic children name fewer pictures correctly. Even when correct on words with less than 30 per million frequency of occurrence, they perform more slowly than do nondyslexic subjects suffering from minimal brain dysfunction (MBD) or normal controls. However, there is no evidence for “perceptual impairment” underlying dyslexic subjects' low scores and prolonged latencies, as the distribution of their errors is similar to that of normal children. Rather it is the nondyslexic MBD group which produces a high percentage of wrong names, suggestive of mistaking the pictured stimuli for other, visually similar, objects.     

The pattern of exceptionality across domains in learning disabled children

The purpose of this study was to examine the intellectual, academic and behavioral competencies in learning disabled and normally achieving children. Fifty-eight pairs of children (LD and non-LD) in first, second, and third grade were administered the WISC-R and the PIAT; were observed with the SCAN Observational System in their regular classroom; and had teachers who filled out the Classroom Behavior Inventory. Results indicated that the LD children performed l less well on the WISC-R and the PIAT. There was no evidence of greater variability within the LD children nor was there a different pattern of performance in comparison to normally achieving children. The learning disabled children were consistently rated by their classroom teachers as displaying less desirable classroom behavior. The Observational System SCAN corroborated these results, indicating that LD children were more off-task than non-LD children. These result suggest that we re-examine the definition of learning disabilities in the public scholl to put more emphasis on behavioral indices and to refocus the interpretation of test scatter as an index of learning disabilities.     

Similarity among common measures of academic achievement: implications for assessing disabled children

Four commonly used measures of academic achievement were administered in counterbalanced order to 32 elementary and middle school-aged children enrolled in exceptional education programs for the learning disabled. Measures chosen were the Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement, KeyMath-R, Test of Written Spelling 2, and the Gray Oral Reading Test-Revised. Analysis suggested corresponding measures of reading, mathematics, and spelling were highly correlated, although in some instances generated significantly different mean standard scores. Implications for practitioners are discussed.     

Stability of WISC-R scores for a sample of learning disabled children

The study was designed to assess the stability of WISC-R profiles of 36 learning disabled children given the WISC-R two times. The mean time between tests was 2.5 yr. The pattern reported for learning disabled children on Bannatyne's categories was evident for the group at both times, however, this pattern was not found for the majority of subjects. Analysis indicated a decrease over time in Verbal IQs, Full Scale IQs, and Bannatyne's Conceptual category, confirming previous findings. Possible reasons for the changes in scores are discussed.     

Factorially defined verbal and performance IQs derived from the WISC-R: Patterns of cognitive ability in normal and learning disabled children

The axes of the first two dimensions of a principal components analysis of the normative data of the WISC-R were rotated through 45°. This resulted in two orthogonal continua which were interpreted as describing verbal and nonverbal intelligence respectively. Factor score coefficients were used to calculate Verbal Factorial IQs (VFIQs) and Performance Factorial IQs (PFIQs). In normal children, girls (N=1100) prove to be reliably superior to boys (N=1099) in VFIQ, whereas the reverse is the case for PFIQ. In a large group (N=1050) of learning disabled (LD) children, VFIQ is reliably lower than in normal children, and there is also a reliable decline with age over the years 6–16. The LD boys (N=744) are no different from the LD girls (N=306) in VFIQ. In these LD groups the PFIQ is reliably lower than in the normal group at age 6, but rises to a normal level by age 8. The LD boys, overall, return higher PFIQ scores than the LD girls. These results can be used to evaluate the rival hypotheses of ‘deficit’ vs ‘developmental lag’ as a cause of learning disability.     

The immediate impact of aggressive cartoons on emotionally disturbed and learning disabled children

The immediate impact of viewing aggressive cartoons on emotionally disturbed (ED) and learning disabled (LD) children's willingness to hurt another child was assessed. Fifteen ED and 23 LD children (M = 7.25 years old) viewed either an aggressive or a comparison cartoon and then played the Help-Hurt game. The children who watched the aggressive cartoon pressed the Hurt button for significantly more time than did those who were exposed to the comparison cartoon. Across cartoon conditions, the ED children pressed the Hurt button significantly longer than did their LD peers.     

Hyperactivity and related behavioral characteristics in a sample of learning disabled children.

64 learning disabled and 12 minimal brain-damaged children were evaluated by their teachers on 11 categories of behavior. Analysis showed that behavioral characteristics associated with hyperactivity did not differentiate among subjects. Teachers rated poor motor coordination as the outstanding trait of this sample.