LD Adolescents Research Articles

Goal setting and personal responsibility training for LD adolescents

A training program designed to teach Learning Disabled junior high school students to set realistic achievement goals, to expend effort to reach the goals, and to accept personal responsibility for achievement outcomes was conducted with 61 LD adolescents attending four junior high schools. Students were randomly assigned to an experimental or control group. Goal setting strategies and effort attribution training were introduced for a six-week period. Pre- to posttesting indicated that the experimental group learned to set realistic goals and to attribute achievement outcomes to the amount of personal effort expended.

What Works with LD Adolescents?

Fostering intrinsic motivation can lead students to accept more responsibility for their actions and to learn to become more independent.

Academic and cognitive interventions for LD adolescents: Part II.

This is the second of two articles focusing on a review of the academic and cognitive interventions available for LD adolescents. In “Academic and Cognitive Interventions: Part I,” an argument was presented that because of the complex needs of LD adolescents it is important to develop an intervention model that is suficiently comprehensive to impact these students. A further contention was made that such an intervention model would be composed of a number of components. In Part I, reviews of three of these components (motivation, instructional practices for promoting general skill acquisition, and instructional practices for enhancing the generalization and maintenance of skills) were presented. The purpose of this article is to discuss four additional components that would be needed in a comprehensive intervention model for LD adolescents. Specifically, the literature will be reviewed regarding a curriculum or content component, a communications component, a transition component, and an evaluation component. Again, since the existing body of research in the field of secondary learning disabilities relative io academic and cognitive interventions is in its infancy, these reviews will, in places, focus on recommended research instead of on actual findings.

Relative Effects of Two Previewing Procedures on LD Adolescents' Oral Reading Performance

An alternating-treatments design was used to investigate the relative effects of two oral reading previewing procedures: (a) silent: the student reads silently the assigned reading passage prior to reading it aloud, and (b) listening: the teacher reads the assigned selection aloud with the student following along silently prior to the student reading the passage aloud. Five junior-high school learning disabled students, four boys and one girl, participated in the study. In four of five cases results showed that systematic prepractice procedures were related to higher performance levels than was baseline (no prepractice). Differential effects were noted: the listening procedure was related to higher rates of words read correctly than was the silent procedure. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for research and instructional procedures, especially as these relate to adolescent learners.

Academic and Cognitive Interventions for LD Adolescents

In a field that has long been dominated by studies of elementary school--aged children, it is gratifying to see that we now have enough information about interventions with learning-disabled adolescents to fill two Topical Reviews. This month's article is the first of two parts on recent innovations and research on educational programs for LD children in middle- and high--schools. Although the authors note that the study of educational programming for LD adolescents is only in its infancy, it is encouraging to see the wealth of empirical information that is now available in this area. The information provided in this and next month's Topical Review provides a solid starting point, indeed, for the development of effective educational programs that meet a broad variety of goals for adolescents with learning disabilities.-J.K.T.

Self-concept in learning disabled adolescents.

A prevailing assumption in the learning disabilities literature is that the learning disabled adolescent has a poor self-concept. The assumption is widely held but has little foundation in research. To test the assumption, the Piers-Harris Children's Self-Concept Scale was administered to LD adolescents in a large urban school system and in urban, suburban, and rural junior high schools. Results indicated that mean self-concept scores of LD adolescents were comparable to those of the age appropriate norm population and to a normal control group also tested. The assumption is rejected and new research directions are suggested.

Teaching LD Adolescents

The National Secondary School Survey was conducted to obtain "state-of-the-art" information about service delivery to learning disabled and emotionally disturbed adolescents. Public school teachers in all 50 states returned 1,794 questionnaires regarding their own characteristics and those of their students and educational programs. In this report, the analyses of 754 questionnaires returned by teachers of learning disabled adolescents are presented and discussed and five implications for teacher trainers and inservice directors are identified.

Toward the Development of an Intervention Model for Learning Disabled Adolescents: The University of Kansas Institute

At the Kansas institute, research was concentrated on the problems of LD adolescents. Epidemiological studies revealed the unique characteristics of LD in students of high school age. A curriculum comprised of strategy training, social skills, modified materials and instructional procedures was developed. Instructional, motivational, and evaluation components of the curriculum were described.

LD and Normal Adolescents' Causal Attributions of Success and Failure at Different Levels of Task Difficulty

The purpose of this study was to investigate learning disabled and normal adolescents' causal attributions of success and failure performances on various levels of task difficulty (easy, moderate, difficult). The results indicated that the students' perceptions of the task difficulty levels was a significant determinant of the two groups' differing causal attributions; locus of control was inadequate for explaining the differences in attribution ascribed by the two groups. In many respects, the learning disabled students' causal ascriptions for performance outcomes were similar to those of students classified as failure oriented.

Social perception in learning disabled adolescents.

Nonverbal social perception in learning disabled adolescents was investigated using standardized tests of social intelligence and nonverbal communication. It was found that LD adolescents in both grades 8 and 9 were significantly lower in nonverbal social perception skill than control students. In LD adolescents, the Cartoon Predictions subtest of the Four Factor Tests of Social Intelligence appeared to be the paper-and-pencil measure that would be the most useful as a quick index of this skill level.

Social Skill Performances of Learning Disabled, Non-Learning Disabled, and Delinquent Adolescents

Two controversial issues in the field of learning disabilities concern whether LD adolescents exhibit social skills deficits when compared to their nonhandicapped peers, and whether such deficits have a negative impact on the lives of LD adolescents and young adults. The purpose of this study was to address the first issue by comparing LD adolescents' social skills performances on eight general social skills to the performances of two other groups of youths: a group of nonhandicapped adolescents who were members of a high-school band (non-LD) and a group of court-adjudicated juvenile delinquent adolescents who had been referred for social skills training by their probation officers (JD). Social skills were tested individually in role-playing situations. The results showed that the non-LD youths performed significantly better than the other two groups of youths on seven of the eight skills. The LD youths were found to perform significantly better than the JD youths on only one skill, resisting peer pressure. A discriminant analysis demonstrated that the LD group in this study was heterogeneous with regard to social skills. The results of the study point to a cause for concern on behalf of those LD youths who perform significantly lower than the non-LD youths, as well as those LD youths who exhibit deficits similar to those of youths who have been referred by society for social adjustment problems (the JD group). One implication of these results is the urgent need for curricula and procedures for social skills training at the secondary level.

Social Skills Training of LD Adolescents: A Generalization Study

The purpose of this study was to determine the reliability of role playing as a device for assessing generalization of social skills training and to determine the extent to which LD adolescents generalize specific social skills to the natural setting following training. LD high-school students' social skills were observed in two types of situations before and after training: (a) contrived (but unobtrusive) situations in the subjects' natural environment, and (b) novel role-playing situations. Results suggested that LD adolescents do not automatically generalize recently learned social skills to novel role-playing situations and the natural environment. Also, high performance in a novel role-playing situation does not necessarily mean that a student will show a correspondingly high performance in the natural environment. Consequently, it appears that learning disabled adolescents must be trained to generalize newly learned social skills, and that generalization of newly learned social skills should be measured in the learner's natural environment.

Enhancing Self-Concept of LD Adolescents

Enhancing Self-Concept of LD Adolescents

Social interaction of learning disabled junior high students in their regular classrooms: an observational analysis.

Pairs of learning disabled and nondisabled junior high students were observed in their regular classrooms using a continuous recording system. A number of social behaviors and socially related characteristics were observed in the target students and in the teachers and peers with whom they interacted. Results show that LD adolescents do not appear to be social isolates in the classroom. They speak as often to peers and to as many different peers as the non-LD students. The differences between the two groups appear to lie in the areas of attending to the teacher when the teacher is making statements to the class and socially related appearance factors (e.g., grooming, physical attractiveness, etc.).

Wechsler adult intelligence score patterns for learning disabled young adults.

The present investigation used the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale to compare the cognitive profiles of learning disabled and control young adults. Consistent with earlier research using the WISC and WISC-R, the Information, Digit Span, and Digit Symbol (i.e., Coding) subtests contribute substantially and independently to group differentiation. Bannatyne's Sequential factor also discriminates between these groups. These subtest and Bannatyne factor group differences obtain for both average-IQ (≤109) and high-IQ (≤110) young adults. These results suggest that the deficits observed in LD children and adolescents persist into early adulthood.

Improving Test-Taking Skills of LD Adolescents

More and more learning-disabled adolescents are now being served at the high school level. Usually these students have access to the services of a resource room and attend classes with their nonhandicapped peers. Once integrated in math, English, or civics courses, however, they are then faced with the difficult problem of taking tests, for which many do not have the necessary skills. To increase their test-taking skills they must learn systematic procedures through a team effort, including special education consultants, regular education teachers, and supportive personnel. Recent findings in behavioral psychology provide a basis for a multicomponent model to improve the test-taking skills of adolescents with learning disabilities. As with other complex activities, such efforts require first an analysis of the problems that present barriers to effective test taking and then a specification of procedures to alleviate the problems.

Programing Alternatives for LD Adolescents

Programing Alternatives for LD Adolescents

Teaching Secondary Learning Disabled Students to the Mainstream

Without effective cooperative planning between the learning disabilities teacher and the regular classroom teacher, the probability of successfully mainstreaming an LD adolescent into the regular classroom is greatly reduced. Cooperative planning is an educational programming and monitoring arrangement between special and regular educators on behalf of LD students. This article presents the thesis that a major part of the learning disabilities teacher's role is to assist the mainstream teacher in developing and implementing instructional alternatives. The authors delineate prerequisites for bringing about educational change in the mainstream and specify a sequence of steps for systematically creating change in the regular class on behalf of LD adolescents.

Adolescents with Learning Disabilities: Perspectives from An Educational Clinic

In recent years, diagnosis and treatment of LD adolescents have primarily been considered from the public school perspective. This article, however, examines the characteristics, diagnosis, and treatment of LD adolescents from a clinical perspective. Johnson, Blalock, and Nesbitt present data on LD adolescents that have been gathered at the diagnostic-remedial clinic at Northwestern University. Specifically, the following areas are discussed: (a) detailed descriptive data on the characteristics of the populations, (b) diagnostic and data coding strategies, (c) remedial goals, philosophy, and techniques for adolescents, and (d) issues related to programming for older students. This article clearly illustrates the value of studying LD populations in clinical settings as a means of better understanding their characteristics and their responsiveness to intervention procedures.

BEH Final Regulations for Learning Disabilities: Implications for the Secondary School

The final regulations for learning disabilities under PL 94–142 were published in December, 1977. As school districts have attempted to comply with these regulations, questions have been raised regarding their impact on assessment and instructional planning for learning disabled populations. So far, most of the literature on the LD regulations has focused on the preschool- and elementary-aged child. Goodman and Price, however, have analyzed the regulations as they relate to the evaluation of specific learning disabilities and to instructional planning for LD adolescents. This article raises several concerns on behalf of the learning disabled adolescent about the application of the regulations within secondary school settings.