The Study of Cognitive Processes in Learning Disabled Students

Abstract

This chapter focuses on various approaches and measures used to study the cognitive processes of students with learning disabilities. This is a particularly difficult task since there are no published studies systematically comparing the predictive validity and reliability of process measures. This may be due, in part, to the fact that process measures are interpreted within highly inferential frameworks that attempt to explain the mental operations that occur between stimulus presentation and a subject’s response. As such, a greater emphasis is placed on understanding individual differences, rather than on the psychometric characteristics of the task. Given this limitation, however, the present chapter will outline four approaches, as well as some general measures, that assess the cognitive processes of students with learning disabilities. The approaches are not mutually exclusive, but focus on: (a) global structures and processes, (b) cognitive correlates, (c) domain-specific processing, and (d) stage-sequence processing.