Schools conduct comprehensive psychoeducational evaluations to identify students with specific learning disabilities (SLDs) and determine whether they qualify for special education services. This decision-making process is complex and research has documented many factors influencing SLD identification decisions. One such factor may be…

Even though the most prevalent category of disability served in the U.S. school system is specific learning disabilities (SLD), practitioners are often unfamiliar with the indicators associated with a specific LD such as dysgraphia and dyslexia. Misconceptions or an absence of understanding of the behavioral indicators related to dysgraphia and…

The specific learning disabilities (SLD) identification literature is replete with competing narratives concerning the advantages and disadvantages of various techniques and methods. Until a widely accepted and empirically proven SLD identification methodology is universally supported, evaluators should seek to improve the existing alternatives.…

The implementation of prereferral models was being discussed in educational literature as early as 1979. Over the past decade, schools in the United States have begun to adopt prereferral models to meet multiple goals, such as reducing inappropriate referrals to special education, supporting students who face academic and behavioral challenges,…

Aims: People with a learning disability are at increased risk of becoming homeless, but little is known about how learning disability is viewed by people accessing homeless services. This study aimed to obtain the views of people experiencing homelessness about learning disability, in the context of a project that was exploring how to increase…

Quasiregular orthographies such as English contain substantial ambiguities between orthography and phonology that force developing readers to acquire flexibility during decoding of unfamiliar words, a skill referred to as a "set for variability" (SfV). The ease with which a child can disambiguate the mismatch between the decoded form of…

This study examined intervention fidelity (IF) and the extent to which this essential feature of response to intervention (RtI) was included within artifacts (laws and guidance documents) for states requiring RtI for specific learning disability (SLD) identification. Intervention fidelity is defined as the degree to which an intervention is…

Background: Rates of mental health conditions are high among adults with learning disabilities relative to the general population, however research suggests mental health conditions may be missed or under-identified in this population group. This review considers factors associated with the identification of mental health conditions among adults…

Gifted students with learning disabilities have exceptional capabilities and can perform well, but their disability may impede their academic success. Being gifted and learning disabled seems paradoxical. The most misjudged, misunderstood and ignored students and community members are gifted students with learning disabilities. Research about…

Developmental dyscalculia (DD) is a mathematical learning disability that occurs in around 5%-7% of the population. At present, there are only a handful of screening tools to identify children that might be at risk of developing DD. The present study evaluated the classification accuracy of one such tool: The Numeracy Screener, a 2-min test of…

Research on dyscalculia has focused almost exclusively on elementary-aged students' deficits in speed and accuracy in arithmetic calculation. This case study expands our understanding of dyscalculia by documenting how one college student with dyscalculia understood algebra during a one-on-one design experiment. A detailed case study of 19 video…

This study aims to classify subtypes of mathematics disability (MD) using a novel classification method, cognitive diagnostic models (CDMs), and examine whether domain-general skills, namely, linguistic, working memory, and spatial skills, were related to the identification of the subtypes. Participants were 454 children (246 boys; age: M ± SD =…

My research topic is the diagnosis of learning disabilities (LD) in elementary school children. The poorly defined criteria and methods of LD determinations leads to a large number of students labeled with the disability category of LD (Graves et al, 2011; Hutchison, 2021), even though the process is inconsistent and subjective (Graves et al,…

Researchers intending to identify the unique characteristics of dyscalculia rely upon the problematic and imprecise proxy of low mathematics achievement. Although detailed case studies of adults with dyscalculia have offered insight into its characteristics, we do not yet know if these characteristics are unique to dyscalculia and could be used to…

Chapter 2: Nonword repetition has been endorsed as a less biased method of assessment for children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, but there are currently no systematic reviews or meta-analyses on its use with bilingual children. The purpose of this study is to evaluate diagnostic accuracy of nonword repetition in the…