Learning Disability Quarterly

Two key concepts in diagnosing learning disabilities (“severe discrepancy” and “process dysfunction”) are reviewed and their relationship to the habilitation of learning is discussed. Specific guidelines are delineated for correctly calculating a severe discrepancy between an individual's age and ability and level of academic attainment. Methods and reasons for evaluating processing skills are also discussed. Process models of deficit-centered remediation are dismissed in favor of strength models of remediation.

This study provided descriptive information about 790 students with learning disabilities at primary (K-2), intermediate (3–5), and secondary (6–12) grade levels who were identified during the 1987–88 school year in Indiana. The results revealed that identification of students with learning disabilities peaked in the first grade, and that 76% of these students were identified by the end of grade 5. Furthermore, students with more severe discrepancies tended to be identified at the primary level; discrepancies became less severe in higher grade levels. Additional findings were reviewed, and the results of the investigation were compared to previous large-scale studies of students with learning disabilities.

A multitreatment, single-subject research design was used to compare the effects on gains in fluency of two types of mastery criteria for repeated reading. The subjects were four males with learning disabilities, who were at a beginning reading level. One intervention required the students to reread a passage until they demonstrated three successive improvements; the other intervention required rereading until 90 correct words per minute was reached. Both types of criteria resulted in fluency gains for all students, with a mean gain of 58% under the improvements condition and 62% under the fixed-rate condition. The successive improvements criterion appeared to be the more efficient and showed consistent positive effects of fluency gains on generalization to unpracticed passages.

This article summarizes the post-graduation outcomes of 298 students verified as either specific learning disabled or mentally handicapped who graduated from a rural special education program between 1979 and 1988. The following outcome measures were analyzed: current (1989) employment environment, employment outcomes, work-related benefits, primary reported source of income, and living arrangement. Results are discussed relative to comparable published studies, implications for staff training, and the continued need for program analysis and evaluation.

The present study investigated the relations between dimensions of adolescents' attitudes toward school and their academic level, ethnicity, and gender. The Survey of School Attitudes, assessing four aspects of school attitudes, was administered to a sample of 1,140 eighth graders. Students were stratified by academic level (regular class, educationally marginal, learning handicapped), ethnicity (Anglo, Black, and Chicano), and gender. Results showed that regular class students held more favorable attitudes toward reading and social studies than did educationally marginal and learning handicapped students; the latter groups did not differ on several scales. Anglo students expressed less favorable attitudes than did the combined Black and Chicano samples on all four attitude scales. Gender differences in attitudes toward reading favored females; differences in attitudes toward science favored males. Implications of these results are discussed in terms of social comparisons.

Two experiments investigated the effects of sources of strategy information on children's acquisition and transfer of reading outcomes and strategy use. Children with reading-skill deficiencies received comprehension instruction on main ideas. In Experiment 1, some students were taught a comprehension strategy, while others received strategy instruction and strategy-value feedback linking strategy use with improved performance; controls received comprehension instruction without the strategy.

In Experiment 2, children were taught the comprehension strategy or received instruction without strategy training; they were then given comprehension instruction on details. Some children were taught how to modify the strategy; others did not employ the strategy on details. Children who received strategy-value feedback (Experiment 1) and strategy-modification instruction (Experiment 2) demonstrated the highest self-efficacy, skill, strategy use, and transfer. These results support the idea that remedial readers benefit from information about strategy usefulness.