The complexity of learning disabilities.

Abstract

Review of B. Wong (Ed.), Learning about learning disabilities (2nd ed.). San Diego: Academic Press, 1998. (754 pages). The idea of learning disabilities has fascinated scholars for over a hundred years. Learning about learning disabilities (2nd ed.), edited by Bernice Wong, is a reasonably comprehensive survey of the state of the art. The book has many worthwhile chapters and will be of interest to advanced-level students, investigators, and clinicians in the field. Remediation of Learning Disabilities One of the strengths of this book is that the chapters present constructive suggestions for providing compensatory and remedial strategies for individuals with learning disabilities. For example, Moats presents a comprehensive discussion of the difficulties encountered by children with reading problems and a useful discussion of the remediation of those difficulties. A chapter by Graham, Harris, MacArthur and Schwartz provides a good discussion of methods to teach writing and spelling. There are interesting suggestions by Mastrophieri, Scruggs, and Chung for interventions to use with students who have a learning disability in mathematics. Larkin and Ellis discuss adolescents with learning disabilities with an emphasis on social and emotional difficulties and how to treat them. Berninger describes some methodologically sound studies of intervention techniques to help improve reading and writing skills. Butler has provided a detailed discussion of metacognition and instructional techniques to enhance metacognitive skills. Definitional Issues As useful as these chapters are, and I am sure that readers will find the suggestions helpful, there are, however, some fundamental issues that have been largely ignored. The authors of most of the chapters have not come to terms with some very important definitional issues. Many in the area may find themselves yawning or that their eyes glaze over when definitional issues are mentioned. Unfortunately, these definitional issues are one of the most serious problems with the field. Most of the authors of this book have not come to terms with critical aspects of the of learning disabilities. Simply put, in order to understand the cognitive characteristics of a person with learning disabilities or whether or not a particular remediation works, we must know that the independent variable, namely learning disability, has been consistently and reasonably defined. This is not a question of medieval scholasticism or asking how many angels can dance on the head of a pin; it is truly fundamental to progress in the field. Evidence for the difficulties in are highlighted in the chapter by Conte on attention disorders. The range of overlap between learning disabilities and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has been reported to vary between 9 and 92%. There is no attempt to resolve these discrepancies and how they might relate to the selection criteria of the findings of any particular study. This chapter, however, does have a very good discussion of the strategies in dealing with ADHD. The chapter by Willows that provides a comprehensive survey of the research on the visual processing deficits provides a good illustration of the critical nature of the definitional issue. Often the results of the different studies of visual processing deficits and dyslexia are contradictory. Is this, perhaps, because different definitions are used, especially different reading tests, to define who is learning disabled? There is evidence that the use of word recognition, pseudoword reading, and reading comprehension tests will each yield different classifications of who has a reading problem. Again, the lack of consistency in the findings among studies indicates that the definitional issues may be at the root of the problem. Discrepancy - To Be or Not to Be These definitional issues are especially evident in the question of the discrepancy definition of a learning disability. …