Localizing the development of ability differences in organized memory

Although it is well know that learning disabled children tend to perform more poorly than normally achieving children on most memory tasks, the basis of this poor performance remains unclear. Recently, evidence has been accumulating which suggests that disabled children have difficulty with the basic processes of storage and retrieval. The purpose of the present research was to investigate this hypothesis using a recently developed model of memory that provides a factoring procedure for measuring storage and retrieval processes. In particular, we were interested in localizing the source of the development of ability differences in organized recall in early (grade 2) and later (grade 6) elementary school. All of the 600 children who participated had measured IQs in the 97–107 range; however, the disabled students were at least 1 year behind in either reading or arithmetic but not both. All of the children learned a 16-item list that was either unrelated or categorized using either a free or cued recall procedure. The results indicated that while ability differences were present at storage and retrieval, differences tended to be larger at retrieval than at storage, on categorized rather than on uncategorized lists, and in the cued rather than in the free recall conditions. These results illustrate that the ability to execute purposive components of retrieval develops more slowly in disabled than in nondisabled children. Consequently, it is these processes that should be the primary target in remedial memory programs.     

Conceptual process as a function of age and enforced attention in learning-disabled children: Evidence for deficient rule learning

Adapting a modified reception paradigm, three bidimensional rules (conjunctive, disjunctive, conditional) and two instructional conditions (enforced attention vs standard rule learning) are used to test the assumption that deficient rule learning rather than inattention is responsible for poor learning with learning-disabled children. Main findings indicate learning-disabled children are deficient on binary conceptual rule tasks for three age groups (6 to 7, 8 to 9, 12 to 13) compared to normal children matched on sex and IQ regardless of experimental instructions. For both groups, learning is retarded by rule complexity while rate of learning diminishes with increasing age. Data reflect a truth-table logic at all ages for both groups, although there is evidence that disabled children perseverate with a rule-learning hypothesis characteristic of younger nondisabled children. Results are consistent with the hypothesis that rule learning is deficient in children with learning disabilities.     

Social inference skills in learning disabled and nondisabled children

The study examined the performance of 30 learning disabled and 30 nondisabled children in grades 1 through 7 on the Test of Social Inference (TSI). Results indicated that disabled students obtained lower TSI total scores that did nondisabled students: they also performed relatively lower on TSI items requiring more verbal expression. While no difference was found between the groups on the Motor-Free Visual Perception Test (MVPT), the relationship between MVPT and TSI scores was shown to be significant within the disabled group only. Furthermore, this group made more perceptual-type errors on the TSI. Findings are discussed in relation to previous research suggesting a link between visual perception and/or language fluency and social inference skills among learning disabled children.     

The development of working memory in normally achieving and subtypes of learning disabled children

Working memory has been proposed as an important component of reading and arithmetic skills. The development of working memory was studied in normally achieving and subtypes of learning disabled children. The performance of reading disabled (RD), arithmetic disabled (ARITHD), and attentional deficit disordered (ADD) children, age 7-13, was compared to normal achievers (NA) on 2 working memory tasks, 1 involving sentences and the other involving counting. There was a significant growth of working memory as a function of age. In addition, the RD children had significantly lower scores on both tasks. The ARITHD children had significantly lower scores only on the Working Memory--Counting task, and the ADD group had scores similar to the normally achieving children except at the youngest age level in the Working Memory--Sentences task. Thus, a reading disability appears to involve a generalized deficit in working memory. Children with an arithmetic disability do not have a generalized language deficit but have a specific working memory deficit in relation to processing numerical information. As children with ADD did not have deficits in these tasks, working memory may not have significant attentional components. An important component of the development of reading and computational arithmetic skills appears to be the growth of working memory for language and numerical information.     

Story composition skills of middle-grade students with learning disabilities

This study examined the story composition abilities of learning disabled (LD) and normally achieving young adolescents as indicated by measures of writing category, cohesion, and fluency. Findings suggest that although adolescents with learning disabilities have a rudimentary knowledge of story form, this knowledge is less well developed than that of their nondisabled peers. Students with learning disabilities also had greater coherence problems in their writing and were less fluent writers. Several important age trends were noted when results of this investigation were compared with outcomes from a similar investigation involving younger students.     

Locus of control of children with learning disabilities and perceived locus of control by significant others

The perceptions of parents and teachers of 24 children with learning disabilities regarding their children's or students' locus of control (LC) orientation were compared to the LC orientation held by the children themselves. While no significant differences were found between parents and children, teachers were found to perceive in their students with learning disabilities significantly more internally oriented success experiences than the students perceived in themselves. Significant differences in LC orientation were also found between the children with learning disabilities and a comparable group of nondisabled subjects. Implications for both preservice and inservice teacher education are presented.     

Curriculum-based measures of written expression for learning-disabled and nondisabled students

This study examined differences in written expression between a sample of learning-disabled and nondisabled middle school students, matched by grade and sex, using eight curriculum-based measures. All of the learning-disabled students had been identified as having written language deficits as part of their handicapping conditions. The nondisabled students showed superior written expression skills, especially on the production-independent measures. Implications of these results are discussed in relation to psycho educational assessment, the use of CBM for ongoing assessment of written expression, and future studies.     

An evaluation of the discrepancy definition of dyslexia.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether children with dyslexia, that is, children whose reading levels were significantly lower than would be predicted by their IQ scores, constituted a distinctive group when compared with poor readers, that is, children whose reading scores were consistent with their IQ scores. The performance of children with dyslexia, poor readers, and normally achieving readers was compared on a variety of reading, spelling, phonological processing, language, and memory tasks. Although the children with dyslexia had significantly higher IQ scores than the poor readers, these two groups did not differ in their performance on reading, spelling, phonological processing, or most of the language and memory tasks. In all cases, the performance of both reading disabled groups was significantly below that of nondisabled readers. The findings were similar whether absolute difference or regression scores were used. Reading disabled children, whether or not their reading is significantly below the level predicted by their IQ scores, experience significant problems in phonological processing, short-term and working memory, and syntactic awareness. On the basis of these data, there does not seem to be a need to differentiate between individuals with dyslexia and poor readers. Both of these groups are reading disabled and have deficits in phonological processing, verbal memory, and syntactic awareness.     

Memory for Relevant and Irrelevant Information: Evidence for Deficient Inhibitory Processes in Language/ Learning Disabled Children

The present study examined whether language/learning disabled children have greater difficulty than nondisabled children suppressing information that becomes irrelevant during a sentence processing and memory task. During study trials, children were asked to predict and remember the terminal nouns for a series of sentences that highly constrained a terminal noun. For half of the study trials (fillers) the child's prediction was confirmed by presenting the child with the expected ending (e.g., “Butterflies fly by flapping their . . .wings.”). For the remaining study trials (critical trials), however, the sentence ending expected by the child was disconfirmed with a low-probability ending (target noun). Thus, when presented with the sentence, “We made a sandwich with peanut butter and . . . ,” the child's prediction (“jelly”) was disconfirmed with a different ending (“bananas”). Memory for the disconfirmed and target nouns of critical study trials were subsequently tested implicitly with a new sentence-completion task. In this case, memory for disconfirmed and target nouns that had been associated with individual study sentences were measured in terms of priming effects. The analysis of priming effects indicated that language/learning disabled children experienced greater difficulty than nondisabled children inhibiting the activation of irrelevant information (disconfirmed nouns) and sustaining the activation of relevant information (target nouns) during a verbal memory task. These results were discussed in terms of their implications for some of the memory and language difficulties of language/learning disabled children.     

Reading,syntactic, and working memory skills of bilingual Portuguese-English Canadian children

The purpose of the study was to examine the nature of language, memory, and reading skills of bilingual students and to determine the relationship between reading problems in English and reading problems in Portuguese. The study assessed the reading, language, and memory skills of 37 bilingual Portuguese-Canadian children, aged 9–12 years. English was their main instructional language and Portuguese was the language spoken at home. All children attended a Heritage Language Program at school where they were taught to read and write Portuguese. The children were administered word and pseudoword reading, language, and working memory tasks in English and Portuguese. The majority of the children (67%) showed at least average proficiency in both languages. The children who had low reading scores in English also had significantly lower scores on the Portuguese tasks. There was a significant relationship between the acquisition of word and pseudoword reading, working memory, and syntactic awareness skills in the two languages. The Portuguese-Canadian children who were normally achieving readers did not differ from a comparison group of monolingual English speaking normally achieving readers except that the bilingual children had significantly lower scores on the English syntactic awareness task. The bilingual reading disabled children had similar scores to the monolingual reading disabled children on word reading and working memory but lower scores on the syntactic awareness task. However, the bilingual reading disabled children had significantlyhigher scores than the monolingual English speaking reading disabled children on the English pseudoword reading test and the English spelling task, perhaps reflecting a positive transfer from the more regular grapheme phoneme conversion rules of Portuguese. In this case, bilingualism does not appear to have negative consequences for the development of reading skills. In both English and Portuguese, reading difficulties appear to be strongly related to deficits in phonological processing.     

Fact retrieval deficits in low achieving children and children with mathematical learning disability

Using 4 years of mathematics achievement scores, groups of typically achieving children (n = 101) and low achieving children with mild (LA-mild fact retrieval; n = 97) and severe (LA-severe fact retrieval; n = 18) fact retrieval deficits and mathematically learning disabled children (MLD; n = 15) were identified. Multilevel models contrasted developing retrieval competence from second to fourth grade with developing competence in executing arithmetic procedures, in fluency of processing quantities represented by Arabic numerals and sets of objects, and in representing quantity on a number line. The retrieval deficits of LA-severe fact retrieval children were at least as debilitating as those of the children with MLD and showed less across-grade improvement. The deficits were characterized by the retrieval of counting string associates while attempting to remember addition facts, suggesting poor inhibition of irrelevant information during the retrieval process. This suggests a very specific form of working memory deficit, one that is not captured by many typically used working memory tasks. Moreover, these deficits were not related to procedural competence or performance on the other mathematical tasks, nor were they related to verbal or nonverbal intelligence, reading ability, or speed of processing, nor would they be identifiable with standard untimed mathematics achievement tests.     

A study of handwriting in written stories of normal and learning disabled children

Written stories of normally achieving and learning disabled children in grades one through three were compared, using a Handwriting Evaluation Scale designed for this study. The subjects also were given tests for receptive language, figure copying and spelling. The Non-LD and LD groups differed on figure copying, spelling and written productivity, but not receptive language. The Non-LD grade level groups differed significantly on two components of the handwriting scale (Letter Size and Control), while the LD grade level groups differed on three components (Letter Formation, Alignment and Spacing, and Letter Size). The most pronounced differences between the LD and normally achieving children were on Formation and Size. A separate analysis of the third grade stories revealed that handwriting was less related to productivity than spelling and visual-motor skills. Nevertheless, the results indicated that many LD students have weak visual-spatial-motor skills. Implications for intervention are discussed.     

Social Competence of Learning Disabled Children: Cognitive and Emotional Aspects

The aim of the study was to investigate the structure of social competence among learning disabled children, as reported by themselves and their teachers, and the cognitive and emotional aspects that mediate its level. The sample consisted of 40 learning disabled children and 37 matched nondisabled children. Within Harter's competence model and Schaefer's spherical model, the learning disabled group demonstrated lower levels of competence and adjustment and a less mature concept of competence than did their peers. The social competence of the learning disabled children was accounted for by emotional and physical aspects of competence, similar to that found in younger and in children with an intellectual disability, whereas the social competence of the nondisabled peers was accounted for by a combination of academic, cognitive and self‐esteem aspects. Teachers rated the social competence of both groups of children as mediated by introversion and general competence. However, teachers added physical competence to the explanation of the learning disabled group's social competence, whereas they added task orientation to the explanation for the nondisabled group. Intervention planning should be geared toward increasing the social competence of LD children, through alerting teachers to their less mature self‐competence concept, with its special emphasis on nonacademic aspects.     

Perception of gated, highly familiar spoken monosyllabic nouns by children with and without learning disabilities

A forward-gating procedure employing highly familiar monosyllabic words was used in auditory testing of age- and gender-matched children with learning disabilities and normally achieving children aged 8 to 11 years. The portion of the word presented, or "gate," was longer on each successive trial. Nondisabled children identified an average of one more word than the children with learning disabilities, but the mean duration required for word identification did not differ between groups. Better receptive vocabulary scores were associated with identification of words at shorter durations only among the children with learning disabilities. The two groups of children had similar numbers of different meaningful-word and different non-word incorrect responses. The children with learning disabilities exhibited poorer fine-grained auditory discrimination than a control group of nondisabled children. The study concluded that auditory closure skills for the gating task were as good among children with learning disabilities as among nondisabled children, but that sensory discrimination problems may contribute significantly to the learning difficulties of the former group.     

Self-perceptions of first- and second-grade children with learning disabilities

The present study addressed the question of the effects of developmental positive bias and repeated experiences of failure on the self-perception of mainstreamed first-and second-grade Israeli children with learning disabilities. The self-perceptions of 44 children with learning disabilities and their 36 nondisabled classmates were assessed. In addition, teachers' evaluations and objective measures of cognitive performance and social acceptance were gathered. The children with learning disabilities were found to have a greater positive bias and lower self-perception in the cognitive competence domain than their normally achieving peers. Self-perceptions of peer acceptance among children with learning disabilities are similar to their normally achieving peers' self-perceptions, in spite of their significantly lower sociometric ratings and teacher evaluations in the social domain. These findings are analyzed in the context of the globality-specificity dimension of self-perceptions at the age level studied. The obtained pattern of self-perceptions is discussed in the light of the interrelationships between cognitive deficit and experimental factors among mainstreamed first- and second-grade children.     

Acquisition of certain grapheme-phoneme correspondences in normally achieving and disabled readers

The present study was designed to assess the development of the understanding of certain aspects of grapheme-phoneme correspondences in normally achieving and disabled readers. The correspondences rules were studied using both English words and pseudowords, the latter designed to contain the same features as the real words. The subjects were 76 normally achieving and 32 reading disabled children aged 6 to 14 years. The stimuli included words and pseudowords that tested the following: consonant blends, final e, r-influenced vowels, regular and irregular words, function words, and consistent and inconsistent vowels. When matched for chronological age, the reading disabled children performed significantly more poorly than normally achieving children on all of the tasks involving pseudowords. A similar pattern was found for the words with the exception of the highest frequency words (cvc, final e, consonant blends) at the oldest age level, 11–14 years. In this case, the performance of the oldest reading disabled children was similar to that of the normals on the words, but was still significantly poorer when the stimuli were pseudowords. Complexity and irregularity were significant determinants of difficulty. Comparisons were also made for groups of children matched on reading grade level. Even when the reading disabled and normally achieving children were matched on reading grade, the reading disabled children had significantly more difficulty, particularly with pseudowords. Reading disabled children had significant difficulty in abstracting the basic rules for grapheme-phoneme correspondences in English, and even when they have mastered these rules in connection with real words, they still had difficulty applying these rules to pseudowords. In normal development, the learning of these correspondences appears to be consolidated by approximately 9 years of age. However, reading disabled children appear to have a significant and persistent problem with the learning of basic grapheme-phoneme correspondence rules.     

Depressive symptomatology in learning-disabled and nonlearning-disabled students

The present study examined the level of depressive symptomatology in a sample of 100 learning-disabled and nonlearning-disabled fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade students. Depressive symptomatology was assessed using the Children's Depression Inventory (CDI). In addition, students were rated by their classroom teachers on behaviors related to depression based on the DSM-III criteria. It was found that students identified as learning disabled obtained significantly higher scores on the CDI and the behavior rating scale than did children in the regular education classroom. There were no significant differences among grade levels for CDI scores, but a trend was noted. A significant difference was found among grade levels for the behavior rating scale scores. There was a significant positive correlation between CDI scores and teacher ratings of depressive characteristics.     

The influence of coping strategies on the manifestation of learned helplessness

Thirty learning-disabled and 30 normally achieving fourth-grade boys experienced failure on a problem-solving task, following which they received either tutor-assistance or self-instructional training to induce success in coping with failure, or a no-training condition. Training effects were assessed on a subsequent problem-solving task and a measure of continuing motivation. Tutor-assistance training was more effective than self-instructional training for decreasing the number of problems on which learning-disabled boys gave up prior to solution. Compared with their untrained controls, learning-disabled boys with tutor-assistance training gave up less often and solved more problems. Continuing motivation increased with learning-disabled boys who received tutor-assistance training and normally achieving boys without training. Untrained normal achievers attributed failure to adoption of specific task strategies, while untrained learning-disabled boys attributed failure to task difficulty. It was suggested that characteristics of learned helplessness were apparent in the impaired performance of the learning-disabled boys. Normal achievers appeared to have developed active and independent strategies for coping with failure.     

A new look at learning-disabled and normal-achieving children's word-pair memorization ability

An 11-parameter Markov model of stages of learning, which was developed by Brainerd et al., will be presented. The focus will be on parameter interpretation in terms of long-term memory (LTM) processes. Next the model will be used to examine the contribution of these various LTM processes to Schooltype and Age differences in a word-pair memorization experiment. Subjects were 8 and 11-year-old normal-achieving (NA) children from regular elementary schools and 8 and 11-year-old children from special schools for learning disabled (LD) children. One of the main conclusions is that the Schooltype × Age interaction which was demonstrated for traditional performance measures, can be explained by LD children's little developmental progress in storage processes and deviations from normal development in aspects of the acquisition of retrieval algorithms. No deficiences were, however, detected in the LD children's rerention ability early in the task, and in the so-called heuristic retrieval operations.     

A Classroom Study on the Relationship Between Student Achievement and Retrieval-Enhanced Learning

Retrieval practice has been shown to produce powerful learning gains in laboratory experiments but has seldom been explored in classrooms as a means of enhancing students’ learning of their course-relevant material. Furthermore, research is lacking concerning the role of individual differences in learning from retrieval. The current study explored the effects of retrieval in a large undergraduate introductory biology course as a function of individual differences in student achievement. Students completed in-class exercises that required them to retrieve course information (e.g., recalling definitions for terms and labeling diagrams) followed by feedback or to simply copy the information without retrieving it. A later quiz over the information showed that high-performing students benefited more from retrieving than copying, whereas middle- and low-performing students benefited more from copying than retrieving. When asked to predict their quiz scores following the in-class exercises, high-performers demonstrated better overall metacognitive calibration compared to middle- or low-performers. These results highlight the importance of individual differences in learning from retrieval and encourage future research using course-relevant material to consider the role of student achievement in classroom-based interventions.