An Analysis of a Single Case of Comorbidity between Learning Disability and Borderline Intellectual Functioning

Abstract

In this study we explored a case of comorbidity between DSA and Borderline Intellectual Functioning. The girl was fourteen years old, ninth grade of school in Palermo, with significant learning difficulties. Two interviews were conducted, one with parents and one with teachers, to investigate the history of the girl's learning. In the pre-test phase the following cognitive areas were investigated: Q.I. (Level of Intelligence), decoding ability, reading comprehension and writing skills. Motivational-emotional profile was also evaluated: school motivation, self-handicapping strategies, self esteem and school anxiety. To assess these cognitive areas we used: Reading Comprehension Test(Cornoldi & Colpo, 2001), Reading Decoding Test (Cornoldi & Colpo, 2001), Dyslexic and Disorthographic Evaluation Test (Sartori, Job, & Tressoldi, 1995), Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, Revised (Wechsler, 1974), Self-Esteem Scale by the TMA (Bracken, 1992), School Motivational Profile (Alesi, Pepi & Rappo, 2011), Self-Handicapping Scale for Children (Waschbusch, Craig, Pelham, & King, 2007) and School Anxiety by the Psychiatric scales of Self-administration for children and adolescents (Cianchetti & Fancello, 2001). After this pre-test phase, the girl took part in T.I.R.D. Multimedia Training for the Rehabilitation of Dyslexia (Rappo & Pepi, 2011), aimed at improving decoding abilities. This training has involved the girl for three months. It consisted of specific tasks to rehabilitate both visual and phonological strategies: sound blending, word segmentation, alliteration test and rhyme test, letter recognition, digraph recognition, trigraph recognition and word recognition are samples of visual tasks. The first four are samples of phonological tasks, while the remaining four are samples of visual tasks. At last, in post-test phase, reading and writing ability were revalued. The emotional-motivational profile to monitor trends was also reappraised. Results show significant improvements from pre-test to post-test in cognitive, emotional and motivational areas investigated.