Education

Learning Disabilities

I. Definition - A condition that causes significant learning problems, most often related to reading and writing; a disability of unexpected underachievement that is typically resistant to treatment.

A. Unexpected Underachievement - poor school performance cannot be explained by other disabilities or limited potential

B. Reading/ Learning Disabilities - a student's learning disability is most significant in reading

1. reading words (decoding)

2. comprehending language

3. accessing background language

4. fluency

C. Mathematics/ Learning Disabilities

1. retrieving information from long term memory

2. memorizing

3. multiple step problems

4. word problems

5. reading skills

6. information processing

II. Characteristics of Learning Disabilities

A. Negative Attributions

1. lack of motivation

2. learned helplessness and overuse of feedback

B. Being Nonstrategic - not paying attention to the important features of a learning task or not structuring one's learning

1. insufficient thinking skills

a. Classifying - the ability to categorize items or concepts by their common characteristics

b. Chunking - organizing information by groups or topics

c. Associating - the ability to see relationships among different concepts or knowledge bases

d. Sequencing - categorizing and putting items, facts, or