Adult support and the exploratory behavior of children with learning disabilities

Low- and moderate-exploratory children with learning disabilities engaged in exploratory behavior independently and with an adult who communicated support in one of two nonintrusive ways. Consistent with a developmental motivation perspective, low- and moderate-exploratory children showed higher levels of exploration under both kinds of supportive conditions.     

Classroom behavior of children and adolescents with learning disabilities: a meta-analysis

Meta-analysis was used to review the results of 25 studies that compared the classroom behavior of children and adolescents with learning disabilities (LD) to children without learning disabilities. The data were analyzed from several different methodological perspectives. Results showed that both methodologically strong and weak studies demonstrated significant behavioral deficits of children with learning disabilities compared to their nondisabled peers in each of five overall areas: on-task behavior, off-task behavior, conduct disorders, distractibility, and shy/withdrawn behavior. Both observational and teacher rating data demonstrated these differences. Effect sizes for both groups of studies seemed to cluster around 1 standard deviation, suggesting noticeable and educationally significant impairment in the behavior of children with disabilities. Analysis of grade-level effect sizes suggests some explanation for the large number of referrals often witnessed during the elementary school years. Educational implications of these behavioral differences in terms of implications for mainstreaming are discussed.     

Conversational engagement of children with learning disabilities

This study was designed to characterize the conversational engagement techniques employed by children with and without learning disabilities while in a dyadic interaction. Engagement was defined and measured in terms of the degree to which utterances provided information and evidenced responsiveness to one's conversational partner. Sixty (30 with learning disabilities and 30 nondisabled) 9- to 13-year-old subjects participated. Analyses indicated that the subjects with learning disabilities (LD) could and did employ engagement-related techniques similar in levels of sophistication to those of their nondisabled peers, although they did so less consistently and frequently. Further, the relationship between affective measures and the engagement-related techniques used by the subjects with LD differed markedly from those of the nondisabled subjects. The results are interpreted from a motivational standpoint and suggest that future research should focus on the knowledge and application of engagement-related techniques of the children with LD, across settings and conversational partners.     

Comprehension of humor in children with nonverbal learning disabilities,reading disabilities,and without learning disabilities

The normal development of humor in children has been well documented with a predictable course that is tied to social, cognitive, and linguistic development in children. This study explored humor comprehension in children with nonverbal learning disabilities (NVLD). Children with NVLD were compared with children with reading disabilities and a comparison group of children with no learning disabilities to assess their comprehension of humor. The humor test was composed of a joke and cartoon section. No group differences in humor comprehension were found when the NVLD group was defined as having visual–spatial and visual reasoning deficits. However, when the NVLD group was divided into children with and without social perceptual difficulties as defined by a direct measure of social comprehension, significant group differences were found in the levels of humor comprehension. These results support the association of humor comprehension with social perception and lend tentative support to the hypothesis that children with NVLD may not be a homogenous group. Future study directions include further exploration into the nature of the association between humor comprehension and social perception as well as closer examination of the heterogeneity of NVLD.     

Metaphoric competence in children with learning disabilities

Metaphoric competence was examined in two groups of children with learning disabilities and one group of nondisabled peers ranging in age from 9-0 to 11-0 years. There were five girls and seven boys in each group. One group of students with learning disabilities had a history of spoken language impairment and the other group did not. Subjects were administered three verbal metaphor tasks (comprehension, preference, and completion) and a visual metaphor task, the Metaphor Triads Task (MTT). The three verbal metaphor tasks were administered in three contexts: (a) sentence, (b) story, and (c) story plus visual (pictorial) support. The group with a history of language impairment consistently performed more poorly on the metaphor tasks than the group without a history of language impairment, who, in turn, performed more poorly than the nondisabled children on all but the MTT. Context variations had no effect on children's performance. Theoretical and clinical implications will be discussed.     

Concerns of families of children with learning disabilities

The purpose of this report is to share the experiences and concerns of a group of parents of children with learning disabilities. Parents of eight different families were interviewed in depth, and seven themes emerged from the interviews. Parents discussed their involvement in their child's education, and their positive and negative experiences with school personnel as well as with seeking other sources of support. They expressed concerns about the social isolation and future well-being of their children with learning disabilities. They indicated many emotional strains from parenting children with learning disabilities, and that there are both positive and negative effects on the families. Implications for further research and practice are discussed.     

The adult outcomes of children with learning disabilities

The results of four follow-up studies of learning-disabled children are reviewed. A comparison of results among the studies and of analyses of individual variation within the studies suggest some factors associated with long-term outcomes. It is argued that in many cases learning disabilities are not a lifelong handicapping condition, especially if adequate treatment is provided during childhood.     

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.     

Subtraction by addition in children with mathematical learning disabilities

In the last decades, strategy variability and flexibility have become major aims in mathematics education. For children with mathematical learning disabilities (MLD) it is unclear whether the same goals can and should be set. Some researchers and policy makers advise to teach MLD children only one solution strategy, others advocate stimulating the flexible use of various strategies, as for typically developing children. To contribute to this debate, we compared the use of the subtraction by addition strategy to mentally solve two-digit subtractions in children with and without MLD. We used non-verbal research methods to infer strategy use patterns, and found that both groups of children switch between the traditionally taught direct subtraction strategy and subtraction by addition, based on the relative size of the subtrahend. These findings challenge typical special education classroom practices, which only focus on the routine mastery of the direct subtraction strategy.     

Sustained and selective attention in children with learning disabilities

Sustained and selective attention of 30 fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade students with learning disabilities (LD) and 20 controls were compared. A continuous performance test (CPT) yielded no differences for students with LD and controls, suggesting similar ability for both groups in sustaining attention and inhibiting impulsive responding. Subjects with LD made more errors than controls on a selective attention task when letter distractors were adjacent to the target letter but not when they were distant, and more correct responses than controls when facilitating letters were adjacent to the target, suggesting that students with LD are less able to narrow the focus of their attention. Longer response times by students with LD indicate that they have slower information-processing skills than controls. Regrouping students according to teacher ratings for attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) yielded the customary impulsive response set on the CPT and more errors on the selective attention task, but no differences on response times for students with ADHD. LD students with ADHD made more errors than LD students without ADHD when letter distractors were adjacent to the target letter.     

Neuropsychological profiles of children with learning disabilities and children with documented brain damage

This study sought to identify clusters or subtypes of children with learning disabilities (LD) and documented brain damage (BD) on the basis of a comprehensive neuropsychological battery. Sixty subjects, 24 with LD and 36 with BD, participated in the study. The standard scores for several measures from the Intermediate Battery of the Halstead-Reitan Neuropsychological Battery and other select measures were submitted to Q-Technique factor analysis for the entire sample. Five clusters were determined. No one cluster was composed exclusively of LD or BD subjects, with the proportions of LD and BD varying considerably from one cluster to the next. There were some qualitative differences between the clusters, while quantitative differences also figured prominently.