Attention and Cognitive Deficits in Learning-Disabled Students

Abstract

This research investigated two procedures which, according to previous research, facilitate the acquisition of concepts among normal children: (a) the selection and sequence of positive and negative examples and (b) analytic assistance during concept learning. Each of two experiments involved elementary grade, learning-disabled students and included an initial study followed by a replication in a different region of the country. Training and testing were conducted with individual students. The purpose of Experiment 1 was to determine the effect of including minimally different positive and negative examples in a concept learning set among learning-disabled students. The results indicated that the inclusion of these examples did not facilitate the concept acquisition of learning-disabled students. Experiment 2 was to determine the degree to which learning-disabled students benefit from a simple strategy when learning to draw inferences. The results indicated that exposure to a strategy actually hindered the performance of learning-disabled students.