Editorial: Proposed Guidelines and Criteria for Describing Samples of Persons with Learning Disabilities

Abstract

The field of learning disabilities has grown since its recognition as a handicapping condition in 1968 to represent almost one-half of the children receiving special education services in the United States. At the same time, learning disability remains one of the least understood, yet most debated disabling conditions that affect children and adults. The persistent confusion regarding learning disabilities is due, in large part, to the ambiguous way in which the category is defined. Unfortunately, such ambiguity results in tremendous differences in how educational and clinical professionals identify children who manifest learning disabilities. In addition, confusion about the nature and needs of individuals with learning disabilities is exacerbated in the research arena because many researchers select their samples by simply drawing from classes of children with learning disabilities identified by school district procedures. As is now well known, these samples are biased in unknown ways because most selection procedures are influenced not only by objective test results, but by political and social factors operating within a given school district. In fact, it is more the rule than the exception that, because of inconsistent identification procedures and criteria, a child can literally be cured of a learning disability simply by moving across state lines or even by changing schools within the same community. Clearly, when research samples are taken from such sites, the variability inherent in sample characteristics prohibits replication and generalization of findings. This, in turn, constitutes a severe impediment to the development of any clinical science. In an effort to address this problem with members of the research community, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) sponsored a working conference with a number of journal editors to discuss the drafting of a position paper to delineate criteria for the description of subjects within samples of persons with learning disabilities. Within this context, scientists from NICHD (Duane Alexander, Reid Lyon, David Gray, and James Kavanagh) met with editorial representatives from the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology (Robin Morris), the Journal of Learning Disabilities (Judy Voress), the Learning Disability Quarterly (Lee Swanson), Exceptional Children (Naomi Zigmond), The Clinical Neuropsychologist (Byron Rourke), and the American Speech, Language, and Hearing Association (Tanya Gallagher). Editors from other