REFERENTIAL COMMUNICATION OF LEARNING DISABLED ADOLESCENTS UNDER CONDITIONS OF COMMUNICATION FAILUR

The present study compared learning disabled and normal adolescents' performances on a referential communication task where response to repeated failure was required. It extended past research into an older population and expanded present knowledge of the recoding process.;Fifteen learning disabled and 15 nondisabled boys ranging in age from 13.25 to 15.42 years were speakers in the Krauss and Weinheimer (1964) referential communication task. The subjects were required to describe abstract drawings until the listener appeared to select the correct stimulus. A predetermined schedule of listener selections required the subjects to produce from one to four responses for each of eight drawings. Two drawings were described at each of four failure levels (0-, 1-, 2-, and 3-communication failure). The subjects' 600 response segments (20 per subject) were audio tape recorded and transcribed. The segments were presented to 10 adult judges who matched the description to the drawing described. Following the initial analysis, a second group of 10 adult judges was added. The two judging groups allowed for examination of the segments as individual events and "sets" of related events.;Effectiveness scores, type-token ratio values, and response latency measures were compared over the two groups and three failure levels (1-, 2-, and 3-communication failures) via analysis of covariance procedures. The 0-failure level responses were utilized as covariates when possible confounding due to stimulus inequality was suspected. Results indicated that learning disabled adolescents were less effective communicators of referential information than normal peers. Further examination of learning disabled boys' communication suggested that a semantic deficit occurred in the accuracy, retrieval, and precise combinations of words. Editing difficulties were associated with the inability to take the perspective of the listener, to consistently inform the listener of drawing rotations, and to suppress irrelevant and imprecise information.;Thus, the learning disabled subjects' disorder included specific word usage and general cognitive processing factors. The data suggested that the learning disabled adolescents were quantitatively different from the normals. Their responses were less effective but mirrored the changes observed in the normal sample over the levels of repeated communication failure.