Through three case studies of male adults (taped sessions of individual instruction), Johnston examines the psychological and social determinants of reading failure. Unlike theories that focus on neurological or processing deficit explanations, he finds reading disabilities affected by anxiety, maladaptive strategies, conflicting motives, and…

The author focuses on literacy among students--those still in school or recently graduated. She discusses literacy trends among elementary, high school, and college students; uses of literacy trends; results of a 1980 National Assessment of Educational Progress study; developmental changes in individuals; and reading disability, dyslexia, and…

Resource and special class teachers of learning disabled (LD) and behaviorally disordered elementary and secondary students rated behaviorally disordered Ss as exhibiting more of five patterns of deviant behavior than LD Ss. Secondary Ss exhibited more rule breaking than elementary Ss; and special class Ss, more anxious, fearful behavior than…

The study involving 28 educationally handicapped (EH) and 25 learning disabled LD/EH children (mean ages 13 and 12 years) included among its results that EH Ss took significantly more personal responsibility for academic failure than did LD/EH Ss; EH Ss attributed success to ability but failure to both lack of ability and lack of effort.…

The study compared adaptive behavior, social adjustment and academic achievement of educable mentally retarded, learning disabled, behavior disordered, and regular class elementary children (N=120). Significant differences were found in adaptive behavior, social adjustment, and academic achievement among the four groups; none of the instruments,…

The Learning Disabilities Unit of New York's State College of Optometry, providing testing and research for learning disabled adults and children and professional instruction and clinical experience for students of optometry and related fields, is described. (MSE)

The efficiency with which learning disabled and nonlearning disabled college students perform cognitive processing tasks was examined. A simple visual reaction time and speeded classification tasks were used. Learning disabled adults were slower and more variable on speeded classification tasks but did not differ on visual reaction time tasks.…

Discusses techniques school counselors can use in identifying high school students with learning disabilities and presents the counselors' role in helping students develop time management skills. Six elements of scheduling are presented. A learning disability checklist is included. (BL)

The current study attempted to further clarify the relationship between speed and span by directly examining whether slower identification of item information is the source of memory span difficulties in learning disabled children. Results indicated that span performance varied directly with naming speed. (Author/LMO)

The values of learning to express oneself in writing are noted, major components of writing (psychological factors, content, and craftsmanship) are identified, and approaches to evaluating written language disorders through formal and informal methods are described. Intervention information focuses on hierarchial skills, motivation, content area…

An unadjusted low-achievement criterion was compared with a regression-discrepancy criterion for identifying learning disabled children. The use of an unadjusted achievement raw score criterion resulted in misdiagnosing many children as learning disabled, while failing to identify many others. Different sets of predictor variables were associated…

Three experiments exploring the relationship of cognitive effort to the differences in word recall between skilled and learning disabled readers are described. Results suggest the amount of cognitive effort that can be effectively expended to produce a distinctive memory trace is related to individual differences in attentional capacity.…

An investigation of effects of information processing models on instruction showed that strategy and metacognitive instruction is infrequent in teacher-child interactions; a behavioral paradigm captures most teacher-child interactions; what teachers say and do is discrepant; and content of teacher-child verbal behavior varies minimally between…

The article reviews the phenomenon of learning disabilities existing along with giftedness, discusses clinical impressions of LD gifted students, offers guidelines for identification and intervention (acceleration and enrichment), cites existing model programs, and notes the importance of counseling and training for parents. (CL)

Discusses lack of courseware for deaf and learning disabled; presents results from a survey which indicate that microcomputers are used in schools for the deaf despite lack of courseware; describes current exploratory and programed learning courseware; discusses its effectiveness; and reviews problems, weaknesses, and future potential for…