COMPARISONS AMONG BEHAVIOR DISORDERED, LEARNING DISABLED, AND NORMAL UPPER ELEMENTARY SCHOOL MALES ON COGNITIVE AND SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL FACTOR

In recent years, the practice of categorizing special education populations by primary area of disability has come under attack. The suggestion has been made by several authorities in the field to separate children more appropriately by severity of handicap: mild, moderate, or severe. The literature, however, continues to be prolific in studies which attempt to prove hypotheses of differentiation of special education subgroups from normal children. Few comparative studies of commonalities of special education subgroups are found. The purpose of the present research is to provide such a comparative study of mild learning disabled (LD), mild behavior disordered (BD), and normal children on several social-emotional and cognitive factors in an attempt to document the commonalities of LD and BD children.;Twenty each LD, BD and normal 11 and 12 year old male children matched on IQ, race, and SES were administered tests of cognitive style (field dependent-field independent) and short-term memory (STM). The children rated their own behavior and anxiety levels on self-report instruments, and both regular and special education teachers evaluated each child using a behavior rating scale.;Analyses of variance and discriminant function analyses were used to analyze the data. Results indicate that the WISC-R Analytical Triad (Block Design, Picture Completion, and Object Assembly) is significantly positively correlated with the field dependence measure. Field dependent children in all groups have poorer STM, and LDs and BDs both have poorer STM than normals. Special education teachers rate LD and BD children the same behaviorally, but regular teachers see BDs as more poorly behaved. The LDs and BDs both rate themselves as poorer behaved and higher in anxiety than normals. Discriminant analyses support the contention that LDs and BDs cannot be differentiated reliably.