Responsiveness to intervention (RTI) is being proposed as an alternative model for making decisions about the presence or absence of specific learning disability. We argue that many questions about RTI remain unanswered, and that radical changes in the proposed regulations are not warranted at this time. Since many fundamental issues related to…

August 2002 found the author scouring the rocky shore of Joggins, Nova Scotia, hunting for fossils dropped off by the last high tide. The experience highlighted the challenges of paleontology. She collected a bunch of rocks she thought had definite prints of plants or animals, but when she took them to the town's fossil museum, it turned out she…

The author reflects upon some of the similarities and differences that exist across 25 years of research and practice in language learning disabilities and provides examples of how definitions of and perceptions about language, learning, and reading disabilities are still evolving. The author also evaluates language intervention approaches then…

Children's literature often portrays characters with disabilities. These books may be used to promote awareness, understanding, and acceptance of those with disabilities. We provide guidelines for selecting high-quality literature and ideas for using characterizations of learning disabilities to teach students about themselves and others. Two…

Researchers have found that students with learning disabilities (LD) obtain statistically higher scores on measures of depression than their peers without LD. However, what is not known is whether students with LD display greater levels of clinical depression than their peers without LD. If they do, then special education services should address…

We examined how strongly motivation, metacognition, and psychopathology acted as predictors of learning disabilities (LD). The results from five studies suggested that level of motivation (as shown through self-efficacy, motivational force, task avoidance, goal commitment, or self-concept) was highly accurate in classifying students with or at…

This study was designed to determine a word problem difficulty classification in children with arithmetic learning disabilities (ALD; n = 104) in comparison with typically achieving students (n = 44). We tested variables such as (a) semantic structure (Change, Combine, Compare, and Equalize), (b) operation (subtraction and addition), and (c)…

The purpose of this article is to examine models designed for the determination of a learning disability and compare them to specific criteria to determine whether the given diagnostic process is ecological in nature. The traditional child-centered deficit model (CCD), Relative Achievement Discrepancy model (RAD), and Responsiveness to…

This article reviews the results of a survey of the Fellows of the American Academy of School Psychology (Academy; AASP) regarding the independent educational evaluation (IEE) for a specific learning disability (SLD). Academy Fellows were asked about important components of the IEE, desirable evaluator qualifications, and recommended criteria for…

This paper begins with a discussion of what we mean by easy information. It then describes the methods employed in a project to create guidance on making information easier for people with learning disabilities. Researchers and people with learning disabilities worked together to interview information providers about approaches they had used and…

The counterintuitive developmental trend in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) illusion (that false-memory responses increase with age) was investigated in learning-disabled and nondisabled children from the 6- to 14-year-old age range. Fuzzy-trace theory predicts that because there are qualitative differences in how younger versus older children…

Professionals and researchers once suggested that about 6% or 7% of all students had serious emotional disturbance (SED). Congress thought about the cost, and then thought otherwise. As a result, Congress created a 2% solution, and then wrote the law in a way that discouraged identification of students with SED. Schools must obviously also have…

Dyslexia may represent the first example of a LD whereby a possible pathway may link the observed behavior to an underlying neurological substrate that has a neurodevelopmental history beginning with an abnormal gene. Similar efforts are being made to link other cognitive disorders of development to a molecular pathway involved in brain…

Some of the issues that dominated, or at least held sway, in the neuropsychology of learning disabilities (LD) in the 1970s included: the definition of LD, whether there are reliable and valid subtypes of LD, whether and to what extent LD are related to cerebral dysfunction, and whether LD are related to types and/or degrees of psychosocial…

Historically, most of the professional literature in the field as well as federal funding initiatives in research and program development have been directed at younger students with learning disabilities (LD). The prevailing assumption (or hope) has been that if intervention took place at a young age, many of the manifestations of the learning…