The comparison of cognitive and linguistic skills in individuals with developmental disorders is fraught with methodological and psychometric difficulties. In this paper, we illustrate some of these issues by comparing the receptive vocabulary knowledge and non-verbal reasoning abilities of 41 children with Williams syndrome, a genetic disorder in…

Teachers of physiology at all postsecondary levels were asked to participate in a survey about the possible sources of students' difficulty in learning physiology. Sixty-three physiology teachers responded to the 18-question survey; 35 of the respondents also responded to a request for written comments about this issue prior to taking the survey.…

Sound academic screening can be done efficiently and effectively in the early elementary years. There are existing screening tools available and new ones being validated that collectively can address the need for universal and systematic narrow-band and broad-based assessment of students' academic enabling behaviors and academic skills in key…

In this article, we examine the extent to which children with autism and children with learning difficulties can be discriminated from their responses to different patterns of sensory stimuli. Using an adapted version of the Short Sensory Profile (SSP), sensory processing was compared in 34 children with autism to 33 children with typical…

The topic in this paper is how former special needs students with academic competence from upper secondary school succeed in education on a higher level. The study concentrates on students who at their start in upper secondary education were registered with problems of concentration, difficulties in reading, writing or mathematics. The main part…

This study examines recent evidence that many children with learning disabilities (LD) have accompanying behavior problems, especially children who experience academic difficulties in school but who are not formally diagnosed as LD. Subjects were 85 referrals to a university educational assessment center from 1991 to 1994. The subjects, 58 males…

Designed for use with secondary level learning disabled students and slow learners, this guide contains materials for familiarizing students with the Iowa Basic Driver's Manual. The following materials are included: pre- and posttests, chapter tests, vocabulary drills, worksheets to accompany each chapter of the Iowa driver's manual, and answer…

Examines the social and educational factors that make learning difficult for Negro students. (RB)

Investigated the hypothesis that children who sustain specific reading disabilities experience difficulty in abstracting and generalizing the invariant components of words containing redundant elements because of basic dysfunction in categorical processing. Subjects were 120 poor and normal readers from the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades.…

Affective factors are at least as important as dialect differences in discovering why innercity children have difficulty learning, according to the research cited in this literature review. (RB)

An ethnographic study was conducted in an elementary school in order to understand the relationship between teacher behavior and the environments of classes identified by teachers as their "worst." First, research on teacher behaviors was reviewed to identify a set of factors identifiable with effective and ineffective teaching. Ten dimensions of…

The paper reviews research investigating the relationship between delinquency and school achievement, with particular emphasis on literature published since 1971. Individual sections address studies on incarcerated youth, the relationship between student track positions and delinquency, the responsibility of schools as a social institution, common…

Learning characteristics of children with spina bifida (lesions on the spinal cord) are reviewed in the text of a presentation with slides, and the effects of such factors as hospitalization experiences and the presence of hydrocephalus are considered. Characteristics related to intelligence, sensory integration, tactile responsiveness, tactile…