To test the relation between sluggish cognitive tempo (SCT) and DSM-IV ADHD symptoms, parent and teacher ratings of the 18 DSM-IV ADHD items and five potential SCT items were obtained in a community sample of 8-18 year-old twins that was overselected for ADHD and learning disabilities (n = 296). Confirmatory factor analyses revealed that a…

People with learning disability (LD) experience a range of mental health problems. They are a complex population, whose needs are not well understood. This study focuses on the development of a systematic process of needs assessment for this population. The Cardinal Needs Schedule used in general psychiatry was adapted for people with learning…

Historically, people with learning disabilities have had little or no access to psychotherapeutic interventions, although there are signs that, over the past decade, this situation has seen some gradual improvement. This paper provides an overview of the evidence for the effectiveness of psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioural and cognitive therapies…

A dialogue about responsiveness to intervention (RTI) is being conducted by experts in the field of special education and more particularly in learning disabilities (IIX). RTI is proposed at once as a method of prevention and as an alternative to IQ-achievement discrepancy for diagnosing LD, depending on the author's perspective or the vintage of…

In the fourth session of the National Research Center on Learning Disabilities Responsiveness-to-Intervention Symposium in 2003, Good, Vellutino, and Torgesen presented papers that addressed the question, "How should unresponsiveness to secondary intervention be operationalized in an RTI approach to LD identification?" In this commentary, I…

The main federal special education law's promotion of a practice that can identify children with learning disabilities and give them early help has brought new attention to the method. Known as response to intervention, or RTI method aims to catch specific learning disabilities before the students fall far behind their classmates. In the best…

This article makes the case that it no longer makes sense to delay the process of identifying children with disabilities until after kindergarten. The purposes, expectations, and day-to-day realities of kindergarten have changed, and children who eventually will be identified for special education are put at a considerable disadvantage when their…

The phrase highly qualified teacher does not mean what it used to, because its meaning is now completely associated with No Child Left Behind (NCLB) requirements. This seems to imply that experienced and effective special educators are now unqualified (or merely qualified) to teach students with learning disabilities. The author believes that the…

There have been many changes in social skill instruction over the past three decades. Many of them are good, some continue to challenge. The author is just as convinced today as she was at the beginning of her career that children can be taught to be more adaptive. She does not believe that educators cannot afford to fail, because this is germane…

Various kinds of learning disabilities confronted by Andrea Loewenstein in her school days are mentioned. These days there are learning disabilities of various kinds, though they are reserved for middle-class children, special provisions involving extra time and help are mandated.

By using videos of children with severe learning disabilities, this study examines understanding of learning disability displayed by the younger siblings of children with learning disabilities as compared with their classmates who have had much less contact with disability. Results indicated that some children from both groups, as young as 3…

Of 1100 children referred to a mainstream paediatric speech and language therapy service in a 15-month period (January 1999 to April 2000), 320 had primary speech impairment. No referred child had significant hearing impairment, learning disability or physical disability. This paper describes the nature of the subtypes of speech disability…

As educators, we need to change the way we think about cognition and emotion, especially for children who struggle to read. Emotion and cognition work in parallel in subtle and powerful ways. In this article, we explore the relationship between emotion and cognition in a group of children with reading disabilities in grades five through nine. We…

A teacher wanted to know whether mnemonic strategies would be useful for high school students with learning disabilities. Over a 6-week period, this teacher taught the students SAT vocabulary words using either a traditional instructional approach or pictorial mnemonic keyword strategies she had developed. At the end of the instructional period,…

This study assessed responsiveness to a 16-week mathematical problem-solving treatment as a function of students' risk for disability. Among 301 third graders, "TerraNova" scores were used to categorize students as at risk for both reading and mathematics disability (MDR/RDR; 20 control and 12 experimental), at risk for mathematics…