Learning Disability Quarterly

This study examined the personality characteristics of 180 boys and girls of ages 8, 9, and 10 with learning disabilities (LD) in 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade in urban and rural primary schools of Andhrapradesh, India. The subjects were identified based on their scholastic achievement on a spelling dictation test, an oral reading test, a reading comprehension test and an arithmetic test developed specifically for the purpose, along with mental ability tests - Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices and Draw-A-Man. An adapted version of the Children's Personality Questionnaire (CPQ) was administered to the subjects with LD and a comparison group of children without learning disabilities (NLD). Examination of scores obtained by LD and NLD subjects on the CPQ portrays the LD child as having problems in social and emotional adjustment. Further, the older LD children tended to show a more maladaptive behavioral disposition than the younger, and there was a significant gender effect among LD children.

Given that affective and cognitive processes interact in writing, it is important that interventions for developing writing ability focus both on strategies for developing motivation and cognitive processes. This article provides evidence for the efficacy of an instructional program that combines training in composition processes with strategies for developing motivation to achieve. Motivational training focused on multiple attributes: value and functional character, standards of performance, expectations, beliefs, self-efficacy, self-esteem and writing-related factors. Sixty-six fifth- and six-grade students with learning disabilities were assessed on a series of measures prior to and following the motivational intervention. Compared with a control group (n=61), trained students showed significant improvements in the quality of their writing (measured in terms of text structure and coherence) and in their attitudes towards writing. They did not, however, show significant changes in productivity (quantity of text produced), self-esteem, beliefs and expectations, or in writing- related attributions.

In this study, perceptions of learning disabilities were obtained from 128 principals and 123 teachers in the Nara Prefecture, Japan. A factor analysis indicated that five factors underlie perceptions of learning disabilities: changes in the family and social situation, insufficient knowledge of and support for learning disabilities, teachers' abilities and professional development, teachers' situation and governmental issues. Teachers' situation was perceived to be the main factor, whereas the least important factor was governmental issues. Teachers mainly indicated agreement on the factor of insufficient knowledge of and support for students with learning disabilities. Principals were more aware of governmental issues than teachers.

The purpose of this study was to look for personality variables that characterized young adults with learning disabilities and test anxiety. Fifty-four Israeli adults diagnosed with learning disabilities participated in the study, 24 of them were diagnosed as having test anxiety; 30 did not have test anxiety. The participants completed the Test Anxiety Inventory (TAI) to validate the diagnosis of test anxiety and the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) to assess the different personality profiles. The results showed significant differences between the two groups on 35 out of 68 measures of the MMPI-2. A discriminant-function analysis of the content scales, the supplementary scales, and the Harris-Lingoes scales of the MMPI-2 showed that one measure, College Maladjustment, explained most of the variance. Further analysis assessed the various test anxiety profiles of the two types of test anxiety, “emotionality” and “worry.” The meaning of the results is discussed as a basis for explaining the profile of a student with learning disabilities and test anxiety.