Disabled Boys Research Articles

The Development of Visual Selective Attention and Verbal Rehearsal in Learning Disabled Boys

This experiment is provocative in that it purports to show that learning disabled boys may be developmentally slow rather than physically impaired or functionally fixated. The strength of the experiment, which researchers will particularly note, is the use of a well-researched experimental paradigm with which normal development has previously been established. Hence, the authors can utilize this remembering task to compare the development of learning disabled boys relative to those in previous studies who have not had learning handicaps. — G.M.S.

Reliability of the Matching Familiar Figures Test Scores of Learning Disabled Children

The reliability of the Matching Familiar Figures Test with impulsive learning disabled boys was investigated. 20 children were tested in two sessions separated by a 2-mo. period. Significant correlations for response time and errors scores indicated a high level of stability over time. Educational implications were discussed.

Effects of self‐monitoring, token reinforcement and different back‐up reinforcers on the classroom behaviour of retardates

Abstract Following a baseline observation period, a class of intellectually handicapped boys were given opportunities to monitor and record their own behaviour as on‐task or off‐task. Following this self‐monitoring phase, the self‐administered check‐marks were used as tokens and exchanged for back‐up consequences, which were initially low‐value objects for consumption (possession). These were later increased in value, and finally changed to access consequences (the opportunity to play with but not possess). Self‐monitoring alone produced a significant increment in the externally assessed level of on‐task behaviour. Only when access back‐up consequences were introduced was there a further significant increment. Provision of high‐value consumption consequences was followed by a loss of accuracy in self‐monitoring, and reduction in on‐task behaviour to baseline levels. The study demonstrated the extension of a self‐control procedure to retardates, the importance of separately measuring the effect of self‐mon...

Treatment of Severe Perceptual-Motor Disorders in Children Diagnosed as Learning Disabled

This study evaluates a procedure using positive reinforcement in the remediation of severe perceptual-motor disorders in the handwriting of four earning disabled boys. In Experiment 1, two of the students were asked to copy five words, five geometric figures, and their first name five times during each session. Following baseline in a multiple baseline design across subjects, token reinforcement was made contingent on correct responses (that contained no errors of orientation, sequence, or legibility), and corrective feedback was given following incorrect responses. Probe sessions during which the children copied different words and figures were interspersed three times during baseline and three times during treatment to assess the degree of generalization to new stimuli. Reinforcement and corrective feedback were not given during these sessions. When reinforcement and corrective feedback were introduced, substantial increases in the frequency of correct printings were found during both the treatment and probe sessions for both children. In Experiment 2, similar results were found for two learning disabled boys using a reversal design in one case and a multiple baseline across responses design in the other. A substantial degree of generalization to handwriting in the classroom was found for one student, but weaker evidence for generalization was found for the other.

Response Differences on Word-Naming and WISC Vocabulary

The present study examined whether the symptom of defective attention and the strength of verbal fluency could be used to differentiate learning disabled boys from the normal and educable mentally handicapped learners. Using the WISC Vocabulary subtest and word-naming task, the response differences among groups of 10 learning disabled boys, 10 educable boys, and 15 normal controls were examined. Four discriminant function analyses indicated that the normal boys performed well on both tasks and the educable boys performed poorly, whereas, the learning disabled boys had a strength of verbal fluency that discriminated them from the educable boys and an attentional deficit that discriminated them from the normal controls.

Hierarchical Factor Patterns on the WISC as Related to Areas of Learning Deficit

Initial and 4-yr. follow-up findings on 62 learning disabled boys and 31 matched controls indicated that level and hierarchy of WISC factor scores (verbal reasoning, spatial reasoning, and sequential memory) were related to degree and pervasiveness of basic skill retardation. Of particular significance were scores on the sequential memory factor and the Information subtest. While students with deficits on these tests and deficiencies in mathematics, reading or in other areas, generally cannot or will not employ strategies for memorization and problem solving, they do learn adequately those meaningful (to them) life skills which can be achieved non-deliberately and without resort to strategies. The most successful students appear to use such strategies as chunking, elaboration, rehearsal, and rearrangement to encode new information, and, perhaps just as important, they are willing to try alternative approaches to problem solving when the initial attempt fails.

A component analysis of attentional problems of educationally handicapped boys.

Seventy-three educationally handicapped (EH) and 78 regular class, normally achieving (NA) boys grades 3-8 were tested with a series of measures selected to test three components of attention: coming to attention, decision making, and maintaining attention over time. EH and NA samples were subdivided into three gropus by grade level (grades 3-4, 5-6, and 7-8). Based on a teacher-completed behavioral check list, the EH group was further subdivided according to pupils perceived by teachers as hyperactive or nonhyperactive. With the exception of the youngest group, EH and NA samples did not differ from each other on CA, but regular class boys had slightly higher IQs and better reading scores than did their EH peers; EH hyperactives and EH nonhyperactives differed significantly on reading scores, the difference favoring the nonhyperactives. All pupils were individually administered the Children's Embedded Figures Test (CEFT), the Matching Familiar Figures Test (MFFT), and the Children's Checking Task (CCT), the last designed specifically to assess ability to maintain attention over time. EH pupils did not function as efficiently or as accurately on the attentional tasks as did their normally achieving age peers. Significant differences between EH and NA samples were found for CEFT and MFFT errors, as well as for CCT errors of omission and commission. Analyses of the EH group according to hyperactive--nonhyperactive status were for the most part nonsignificant. Correlational analyses yielded low but statistically significant relationships among the attentional measures, but nonsignificant relationships between IQ and the attentional test scores. Findings were consistent with the interpretation that the three hypothesized components of attention are partially independent and thus may have differential influence on pupils performance in school.

IES test performance by learning disabled boys.

The IES Test was administered to 40 learning disabled boys and 20 control Ss to test the hypothesis that learning disabled children manifest higher levels of impulsivity and lower levels of ego functioning than normal Ss. Of the eight comparisons made in regard to ego and impulse score means, all were in the predicted direction, with four statistically significant ( p ≤ .05). No differences in superego functioning were predicted or found. Implications of the findings for remedial programs were discussed.

A problem-solving model for teaching remedial arithmetic to handicapped young children

An operant problem-solving model was used to assist two handicapped young boys to learn the concept of number. During the initial baseline condition, with intermittent teacher-attention contingencies in a classroom setting, both boys were performing number concept tasks at about the 50% level of accuracy. The situation was changed to a one-to-one, tutor-pupil arrangement, with continuous reinforcement for correct responses. This alteration failed to increase the subjects' accuracy rates. Training was initiated in which the covert part of the response chain was made overt (e.g., attending and counting out loud) so that mediating responses could be monitored and reinforced. Once the subjects were performing at a high degree of accuracy, the reinforcers for the mediating responses were systematically eliminated and only final solution responses were reinforced. Accuracy of problem solutions remained high after training.

The significance of 'lie responses' in the prediction of early delinquency.

Summary. Three measures were obtained concerning 411 boys at primary schools: (i) the degree of Social Handicap of their homes, (ii) school‐teachers' behavioural ratings, (iii) the New Junior Maudsley Inventory (NJMI). Four years later, they were screened for records of court conviction and for minor delinquent acts. Boys convicted by their 14th birthday (N=30) were matched for degree of Social Handicap with innocent controls.Social handicap was found to interact with the three scales of the NJMI, severely handicapped boys being specially high on N. Handicap and teachers' ratings both predicted official delinquency. The contrast between teachers' report and self‐report on the L items produced a scale of ‘Suppression’ which also predicted court conviction. Among the ‘low suppressors' only, Extra‐version predicted conviction significantly. The N scale did not discriminate.

The Effect of Group Counseling on Educable Mentally Retarded Boys’ Self Concepts

The effects of group counseling on the self concepts of young educable mentally handicapped boys were studied, along with the variables of anxiety, deportment and achievement in reading and arithmetic as rated by teachers, attendance, IQ, and age. Results indicated that those who received group counseling tended to exhibit greater improvement in self concept, more reduction in anxiety, and better grades in deportment and the academic subjects of reading and arithmetic, than those who did not receive the counseling. No significant difference was found between experimental and control groups in attendance. Age and IQ were not found to be significant factors in the counseled group.

Changing pattern of disease and disability in schoolchildren in England and Wales.

One appreciates how much has been achieved in these islands when one visits a developing Asian or African country where there is still a mass of untreated physical disease among children, including tuberculosis, diphtheria, typhoid, virulent measles, the tropical diseases, and severe malnutrition. But already in these countries there are doctors and educationists who recog nize that there are also boys and girls with emotional and behaviour problems, and with speech and language disorders, for whom there is no diagnostic, treatment, or special educa tional provision, and whose needs are submerged by the many with gross and grave physical illness. Recently I visited two of these countries, one in Africa the other in Asia, where there was only one psychiatrist in each. One of the countries had a single mental hospital with a nominal 700 beds for adults and children but, on average, 1,500 inpatients, more than half of whom had to lie on the stone floor of the wards. The other country had 100 psychiatric beds for an estimated population of about 12 million; patients, including children, who were considered to be refractory were sent to a home for the destitute. Though such conditions no longer exist in this country we have no cause for complacency. It must be emphasized that children wiith handicaps and disabilities do not often fall naturally into clear-cut separate categories. It is administratively convenient to have categories of handicapped children, but, in fact, many handicapped boys and girls have more than one disability; children with severe multiple handicaps, particularly those with grave defects of hearing and vision, present specially difficult problems to the medical, educational, and social services and, not least, to their parents. Parent counselling is vitally important but is outside the scope of this lecture. Though most schoolchildren with severe handicaps and dis abilities are in special schools quite a number attend the regular classes of ordinary schools, as do many children with less severe handicaps. There is still much to be learnt about what is the best educational provision that it is practicable to arrange for handicapped children, and the more closely the educational and medical services co-operate in this work the better it will be for the children and their parents. The official Ministerial policy is that No handicapped pupil should be sent to a special school who can be satisfactorily educated in an ordinary school. 21

Quantitative and Qualitative Analyses of Endogenous and Exogenous Boys on Arithmetic Achievement

The literature of the past 15 years in the area of mental retardation indicates a strong interest in the effects of brain injury upon the behavior of children. This interest has been characterized by multitudinous researches on the identification of brain injured cases and follow-up studies on the characteristic psychological deviations accompanying these injuries, but by very little research concerned with the impact of brain injury (or the psychological deviations accompanying them) upon school achievement. In spite of the mass of literature concerned with the discovery of neurological defects in the brain injured and subsequent research on the psychological deviations purportedly resulting from these injuries, direct research on the educational consequences of such injuries is sorely lacking. The special techniques established for the training and education of the mentally handicapped, brain injured child are geared specifically to the alleviation or control of the psychological behaviors resulting from the neurological defects rather than to any known educational disabilities characteristic of the brain injured child. Since the interest in the brain injured child has extended to the point of developing special schools, classes, and techniques geared to the unique defects exhibited by these children, it appears necessary to examine more 1 A report on some of the findings of the following study conducted under the supervision of Samuel A. Kirk, Director, Institute for Research on Exceptional Children: Rudolph J. Capobianco, A comparative study of endogenous and exogenous mentally handicapped boys on arithmetic achievement. Unpublished doctor's dissertation, University of Illinois, Urbana, 1954. (University Microfilm Publication, No. 7836, 313 North First Street, Ann Arbor, Michigan). 2 Now Director of Research in Special Education and Rehabilitation, Syracuse Uni