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Results for “Learning disabilities”

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At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1992

The prevalence of depressive symptoms in children with learning disabilities.

Learning difficulties have been considered to be a symptom of childhood depression by some authors, whereas others have examined depression as a cause of cognitive difficulties, including learning disabilities (LD). This study examined the prevalence of depressive symptoms in a sample of public school elementary children aged 8 through 11, 37 boys and 16 girls, identified as LD by state standards. Of the sample of 53 children, 35.85% scored in the depressed range on the Children's Depression Inventory. Comparison of the children's self-reports and parents' reports of depressive symptoms in their children was not significant. Implications of the results are discussed relative to the role of school personnel and the assessment process in recognizing depressive symptoms in students with LD.

Child↗
PubMed1989

A homogeneous group of persons with learning disabilities: adults with severe learning disabilities in vocational rehabilitation.

The results of a comprehensive psychoeducational assessment of adults having learning disabilities (LD) and participating in vocational rehabilitation are presented. The subjects were found to have low-average general intelligence; lower verbal than performance IQs; attention, reasoning, and auditory memory deficits; academic achievement at the fourth-/fifth-grade level; language problems; and low self-esteem. These results were contrasted with other studies of adults with LD in vocational rehabilitation, and all studies on this population reported similar findings. A comparison of studies of adults with LD who were clients of vocational rehabilitation with those in college or employed and with those who had been labeled as learning disabled in childhood indicated that the adults with LD in vocational rehabilitation seem to constitute a homogeneous group of persons with severe deficits. The need to subtype learning disabilities by severity and criteria for making such determinations are proposed.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Learning disabilities as functions of familial learning problems and developmental problems.

A family history of learning problems as provided on a specially designed questionnaire by maternal report was examined in families of 101 children with learning disabilities and 171 children without disabilities. Diagnoses of learning disabilities followed the U.S. Office of Education definition. Students were selected from the Special School District of St. Louis County and the Pattonville School District. A life history of developmental risk factors in the child subject was also examined in the same two groups. Learning disabilities were found to be strongly familial. In principle, the definition of learning disabilities excluded from the study children with problems attributable to child rearing, emotional, or motivational factors. The report of a family history of learning problems is therefore interpreted as consistent with, although not unequivocally supportive of, genetic factors as determinants. Among developmental factors, only male gender proved to have a significant association with learning disabilities.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1991

The effects of sampling conditions on sentence production in normal, reading-disabled, and language-learning-disabled children.

This study explored the effects of contextual support, discourse genre, and the listener's knowledge of information on syntactic and phonologic production and fluency. Subjects were language-learning-disabled, reading-disabled, and normal primary school children. Clause structure complexity, fluency, and grammatical and phonemic accuracy tended to be highest when children were discussing absent referents, providing explanations and stories, and giving unshared information. These effects were generally the same across all groups, although some effects were significant for only the language-learning-disabled children. Several explanations for these findings are considered.

Child↗
PubMed1990

A word identification strategy for adolescents with learning disabilities.

Students with learning disabilities frequently experience difficulty on reading tasks. This difficulty is heightened for adolescents with learning disabilities who are responsible for reading and understanding materials written at several grade levels above their reading ability. Word identification becomes an increasingly important skill for these students, especially when confronted with unfamiliar, polysyllabic words. The present study investigated the effects of training 12 adolescents with learning disabilities in a word identification strategy, DISSECT. The results indicated that the strategy was effective in reducing reading errors for all subjects. However, it was found that increases in word identification differentially affected reading comprehension and indicate the need for separate and/or simultaneous attention to comprehension processes.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1992

Identifying alterable patterns in employment success for highly successful adults with learning disabilities.

Adults with learning disabilities were studied to ascertain the patterns of successful functioning that promoted high levels of vocational success. This area of research has been neglected in the developing research base on adults with learning disabilities. In this study of 46 highly successful and 25 moderately successful adults with learning disabilities using ethnographic interviews, it was found that the overriding theme was control and that control was sought through the pursuit of two sets of themes--internal decisions and external manifestations. These themes transcended the entire sample, and the clear difference between the groups was the degree of attainment on the various elements the themes comprised. These elements and themes are discussed and a model of successful vocational functioning is developed and explained.

Achievement↗
PubMed1991

Hormonal influences in developmental learning disabilities.

Developmental language and learning disabilities in children can take many different forms and can result from a variety of causes. Research to date has focused primarily on specific disabilities in learning, which are characterized by a significant delay or disorder in one aspect of learning against a background of otherwise normal development. Learning disabilities affecting language and/or reading acquisition (developmental dysphasia and dyslexia) have been studied most thoroughly. Verbal learning disabilities occur more frequently in boys than in girls, and there is a higher than expected incidence of left-handedness among affected children. Although there are many reasons why a child may have delayed or disordered language development, differential diagnosis of specific developmental language or reading disorders calls for ruling out mental retardation, peripheral auditory or visual dysfunction, autism, frank neurological impairments such as hemiplegia or seizure disorder, and severe social deprivation or lack of educational opportunity. The typical profile of a developmentally dysphasic or dyslexic child is one who shows a marked discrepancy between nonverbal (performance) IQ and verbal IQ, with a history of delayed or disordered speech, language and/or reading development. Such a child usually performs quite normally on visual spatial tasks, while demonstrating severe deficits in tasks of auditory temporal processing, motor sequencing, phonological processing and memory, language, reading and spelling. This characteristic neuropsychological profile may suggest left hemisphere dysfunction or a failure to develop normal cerebral lateralization. The etiology of these developmental learning disorders is unknown, but there is evidence of familial aggregation, indicating a potential genetic basis. Although these children respond to remediation, longitudinal studies have shown that the symptoms often persist into adulthood (see Tallal, 1988, for a more detailed discussion).

Female↗
PubMed1992

Small-group instruction for students with learning disabilities: observational and incidental learning.

This study evaluated the effectiveness and efficiency of constant time delay (a near errorless learning procedure) in a small-group instructional arrangement. Three fifth-grade students with learning disabilities were taught to recognize multisyllabic basal vocabulary words. A multiple-probe design across behaviors (word sets) was used to evaluate the procedure. Following instruction on each word set, students were assessed on their ability to recognize their own target words, recognize observational words, spell both target and observational words, and define both target and observational words. The results indicated that the constant time-delay procedure was reliably implemented and was effective in establishing criterion-level performance for all students with extremely low error percentages.

Attention↗
PubMed1991

Role of the school in serving children with learning disabilities.

The term "learning disabilities" means different things to different people. Within the educational context, this term is generally interpreted to mean "specific" LDs, as defined in federal legislation mandating school districts to provide services to children with handicaps. The preceding remarks have described the major legal responsibilities of schools with regard to children with handicaps. These responsibilities include identifying and locating children who are suspected of being handicapped, providing a comprehensive evaluation of their needs, planning an individual program for the student cooperatively with the parent or parents, educating children in an environment that is the least restrictive, and providing parents with due process throughout these activities. It is recognized that neurologists count among their patients numerous children whom they have identified clinically as "learning disabled," yet who do not qualify for special education under the "specific" LDs definition employed by the school. This article provides both moral and pragmatic reasons for school districts to develop appropriate means of responding to the needs of such pupils, and examples of accommodations that may be implemented at various levels of the school's organizational structure. Finally, it suggests that by developing effective linkages between their systems, medical and educational personnel can facilitate treatment for children who are having difficulty in learning.

Child↗
PubMed1986

Evoked potential maps in learning disabled children.

Some childhood learning disabilities are associated with altered synchrony patterns of brain evoked potentials. Scalp recorded electrical synchrony between selected brain regions was measured in response to visual, auditory and somatosensory stimuli and compared between a group of learning disabled children and a group of normal children. Statistically significant inter-group differences revealed stimulus dependent greater inter-regional EP synchrony in the learning disabled group. These findings support the notion that some childhood learning disabilities reflect, in part, altered connections between selected brain regions.

Brain Mapping↗