A project to design and evaluate instructional techniques to be used with emotionally disturbed adolescents compared two groups of emotionally disturbed adolescents with normal high school students. Objectives were to evaluate experimental curriculum units and to obtain data to determine to what extent learning difficulties characterize emotionally disturbed adolescents in particular or to what extent they are characteristic of adolescent learning problems in general. One cognitive style dimension investigated was reflection-impulsivity, or a student's disposition to reflect in a problem situation as opposed to an impulsive unconsidered response. The emotionally disturbed students showed a higher degree of impulsivity on one of the two standardized measures used compared to a group of normal controls (p=.05). On tests of creativity there were no statistically significant differences between the two groups. Disturbed students showed a greater relationship between creativity and reflection on verbal measures and between creativity and impulsivity on visual measures. Language problems were found to be semantic, not syntactical. Various curriculum units combining visual and verbal materials, and specific intellectual skills training were helpful in improving cognitive functioning. (Author/RP)