Students who have problems comprehending textual material tend to experience failing grades, peer rejection, and even social isolation. Furthermore, students with poor reading comprehension demonstrate poor academic performance in all subjects, not due to difficulty in learning specific subject content (i.e., math, history, etc.), but rather their…

In transparent orthographies like German, isolated learning disabilities in either reading or spelling are common and occur as often as a combined reading and spelling disability. However, most issues surrounding the cognitive causes of these isolated or combined literacy difficulties are yet unresolved. Recently, working memory dysfunctions have…

Using 4 years of mathematics achievement scores, groups of typically achieving children (n = 101) and low achieving children with mild (LA-mild fact retrieval; n = 97) and severe (LA-severe fact retrieval; n = 18) fact retrieval deficits and mathematically learning disabled children (MLD; n = 15) were identified. Multilevel models contrasted…

Developmental dyscalculia (DD) is a deficit in number processing and arithmetic that affects 3-6% of schoolchildren. The goal of the present study was to analyze cerebral bases of DD related to symbolic number processing. Children with DD aged 9-11 years and matched children with no learning disability history were investigated using fMRI. The two…

This study examines whether residual recall differences between reading ability groups after a memory training task reflect the dimensions of organizational processing. Although age-related effects occurred, no ability group effects emerged, suggesting that learning disabled readers adequately access word features except when organized by…

Two studies investigated (1) the ability of learning disabled children to perform tasks that specifically demand the recognition and production of main-idea statements, and (2) their ability to detect an inappropriate sentence in a paragraph. (PN)

Investigated whether limitations in the enhancement of learning-disabled readers' working memory (WM) performance are attributable to process or storage functions. Found that: intercorrelations among diverse WP measures increased on demanding conditions; and verbal WM was not directly related to reading skill, supporting the notion that poor…

In a task designed to separate perceptual processes from memory, reading-disabled 12-year-olds showed no perceptual deficits as compared to their peers. However, they exhibited major deficiencies in memory skills, appearing to suffer from a basic information-processing deficiency. (Author/CS)

The study examined the role of verbal mediation in language processing by 88 children (ages 8-12 years) with low verbal/high performance Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) profiles. (Author/PHR)

Three experiments exploring the relationship of cognitive effort to the differences in word recall between skilled and learning disabled readers are described. Results suggest the amount of cognitive effort that can be effectively expended to produce a distinctive memory trace is related to individual differences in attentional capacity.…

Investigated how working memory differences between learning-disabled and nondisabled children reflect a specific or generalized deficit and whether limitations in enhancement of learning-disabled student's working memory performance are attributable to process or storage functions. Results suggest that learning-disabled suffer generalized working…

Examined short-term coding and retention processes in normal and disabled readers at two grade levels (third/fourth grade and sixth grade). Differences were found in processing the identities of letters in briefly exposed multiletter array. No developmental or reader-ability differences were observed in recalling the position of an item in the…

A meta-analysis of 79 studies of reading performance of low achievers with and without learning disabilities found students with the learning disabilities label performed considerably worse on reading measures. Use of timed tests greatly increased the difference in reading performance between underachievers and students with the learning…

Individual differences in digit span, susceptibility to proactive interference, and various aptitude/achievement test scores were investigated in two experiments with college students. Results indicated that digit span was strongly correlated with aptitude/achievement scores, but did not indicate that susceptibility to proactive interference…