Children With Learning Disabilities

Abstract

Research has found that children with learning disabilities are at a greater risk for developing interpersonalproblems than nondisabled children. Thepresent study tested the hypothesis that learning disabled (LO) boys differfrom nondisabled (NLD) boys in terms of the strategies and goals that they independently formulate in interpersonal situations. LD children were hypothesized to be similar to younger NLD children who formulate lessfnendly strategies and less sophisticated goals than older children. Boys (8 to 9years and 11 to 13 years) with and without learning disabilities were interviewed regarding their strate@es andgoals in four hypothetical situations. Each situation was presented in an open-ended and in a multiple-choice format. Analysis of open-ended responses revealed that LD boys'goals were signcantly less sophisticated than those produced by NLD children. However, analysis of the multiple-choice responses revealed that when given a set of strategies and goals to chooseji-om, LD boys chose strategies that were just asfnendly andgoals that were just as sophisticated as those of the NLD boys. These results are discussed in terms of the role that socialgoals may play in the peer status problems of children with learning disabilities.