SPECIFIC LEARNING ABILITIES AND STRATEGIES

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SPECIFIC LEARNING ABILITIES AND STRATEGIES
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• specific learning abilities refers to an
  individual's capacity to participate successfully
  in certain aspects of the learning task or in
  certain types of learning

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Considerations In Assessment Of Specific Learning
Abilities

• Purposes
• to determine the student's strengths and
  weaknesses in various types and methods of
  learning
• basic psychological processes refers to learning
  abilities such as attention, perception and memory

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federal guidelines specified three criteria for
eligibility

• severe discrepancy between achievement and
  intellectual ability must be documented
• discrepancy must exist despite the provision of
  appropriate learning experiences
• discrepancy cannot be the result of other
  disabilities or conditions or of environmental,
  cultural, or economic disadvantage

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Issues And Trends

• definition of learning disabilities
• appropriate procedures for the assessment
• effective strategies for educational intervention

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Current Practices

• team assessment
• screening
• violation procedures

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Sources Of Information About Specific Learning
Abilities

• school records
• the student
• teachers
• parents

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Screening For Sensory Impairments

• vision
• hearing
•  

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Screening For Learning Disabilities

• The Learning Disability Evaluations Scale Reform
  (LDES-R)
• teacher rated frequency (rarely to all or most of
  the time)
• seven subscales include listening, thinking,
  speaking, reading, writing, and spelling,
  mathematical calculations
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• Learning Disabilities Diagnostic Intervention
  (LDDI)
• listening, speaking, reading, writing,
  mathematics, and reasoning

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Measures Of Perceptual Motor Skills And Other
Specific Learning Abilities

• specific abilities are difficult to delimit and
  define b/c based on inferences about mental
  processes
• impossible to observe or measure directly how a
  person perceives incoming sensory information
• you can only study the persons overt responses
  and report these experiences 

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• Perception is a process of comprehending
  information received by the senses
• or the psychological ability to process or use
  the information received through the senses

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• motor proficiency involves evaluating the
  efficiency of movements controlled by the body's
  muscles
• fine motor addresses movement and response speed
  controlled by the small muscles of the body and
  includes hand and finger dexterity
• gross motor refers to movement controlled by the
  large muscles of the body including those that
  regulate walking, throwing, catching, and
  balancing

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• perceptual motor integration process of
  coordinating sensory information with
  corresponding body movements
• visual motor processing refers to coordinating
  sensory information from the eyes and
  corresponding movement such as eye-hand
  coordination and visual-motor control
• auditory motor processing is coordinating sensory
  information from the ears with fine and gross
  motor body movements

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• memory is the ability to recall previously
  learned information
• long-term memory ability
• short-term memory - influences long-term
• attention is a process whereby an individuals
  awareness is directed toward some stimulus or set
  of stimulus or the process of selectively
  bringing relevant stimuli into focus (Kirk and
  Chalfont)

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• Information processing is the set of abilities
  that govern the way people receive and respond
  incoming information
• Major component reception of information,
  association of the incoming information with
  previously stored information, and expression

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Test Of Perception

• usually focus on either auditory or visual
  perception rather than the perceptual process as
  a whole
• discrimination is the ability to detect
  likenesses and differences among stimuli, and
• figure ground discrimination is the ability to
  differentiate relevant stimuli from irrelevant
  stimuli
• spatial relationships refers to the perception of
  the relative positions of objects in space,
• form perception is concerned with the size,
  shape, and position of visual stimuli
• auditory perception concerned with auditory
  discrimination, and auditory blending

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• Developmental Test Of Visual Perception - DTVP-2
• eye hand coordination - drawing straight, curved,
  and guidelines within increasingly difficult
  boundaries
• position in space - discriminating and matching
  the areas figures that appear in rotated and
  reversed positions
• copying - copying increasingly complex figures
  from model figure ground - finding geometric
  shapes hidden within a complex background
• spatial relations -producing model patterns by
  connecting dots on a blank grid of dots
• visual closure - viewing a geometric figure
  selecting matching figure from a series of
  figures with missing parts
• visual motor speed - drawing special marks in
  selecting geometric designs on a page filled with
  various patterns
• form constancy - identifying geometric shapes
  displayed in different sizes, shading, and
  positions
•  

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• Motor Free Visual Perception Test Revised MVPT-R
• Auditory Perception Goldman-Fristoe-Woodcock Test
  of Auditory Discrimination
• wake, rake, Lake, make

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Test Of Motor Skills

• Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency
  individual, norm-referenced test, 4 to 14
• gross motor skills
• running speed and agility
• balance
• bilateral coordination
• strength
• gross and fine motor skills
• upper limb coordination
• fine motor skills
• response speed
• visual motor control
• upper limb speed and dexterity

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• Developmental Test Of Visual Motor Integration
• contains 24 geometric forms that have to be
  copied by the student
• scoring is complicated it is pass/fail according
  to the criteria
• example provided the manual to pass the form
  called vertical horizontal cross the students
  drawing must contain 2 lines that are fully
  intersecting and continuous, and at least
  one-half of each line must be within 20 degrees
  of its correct orientation

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Measures Of Memory And Attention

• memory can be described in several ways
• types information to be recalled
• time since our original learning
• type of memory
• organization of recall

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Test Of Memory and Learning TOMAL

• verbal memory index
• nonverbal memory index
• delayed recall index
• sequential recall index
• free recall index
• associated recall index
• learning index
• attention-concentration index
• difficult to measure memory because the learner's
  attention cannot be separated from the task
• inability to isolate attention from other
  factors, attention is often assessed informally
  through observations

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Test Batteries For Specific Ability Of Assessment

• Detroit Test Of Learning Aptitude (DTLA 4th
  edition)
• Illinois Test Of Psycholinguistic Abilities

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• DTLA 4th edition
• young children to adults, fifty minutes to two
  hours,assesses three domains linguistic,
  attentional, and motoric
• word opposite
• design sequences
• sentence imitation
• reverse letters
• story construction
• design reproduction
• basic information
• symbolic relations
• word sequences
• story sequences
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Intelligence Test As Measures Of Specific
Cognitive Abilities

• results of these test are sometimes used to
  provide information about student specific
  learning abilities
•  

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Assessment Of Learning Strategies

• learning strategies are the methods of students
  employee when faced with a learning task
• in recent years interest the shifting from
  studying the isolated specific abilities to
  consideration of learning strategies

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Research Findings

• Many students with learning disabilities
• inefficient and ineffective strategies for
  learning
• tend to recall less information than students
  without
• approach learning tasks differently and are less
  likely to engage in active rehearsal during
  studying. 
• unable to create and apply an appropriate
  strategy to a novel problem
• difficulty with note-taking, attention to
  teachers statements, listening comprehension,
  scanning of textbook passages, monitoring of
  writing errors, and test taking skills

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• Strategy Instruction Model by Deshler
• assesses the students current strategies learning
• acquisition strategies,
• storage strategies,
• studies for the demonstration and expression of
  knowledge 

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Approaches To Assessment

• new in the field of special education
• term learning strategies usually reserved for the
  general cognitive strategies that students apply
  to task in which learning is expected strategies
  for the deployment of attention, for their
  personal skills, and information to be learned,
  for generating and evaluating solutions to
  problems and so forth

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• study skills are more closely tied it is to
  specific school task and often require a less
  rudimentary proficiency in learning and writing
• evaluation of study habits can provide insight
  into the ways a student interacts with a learning
  task
• students work habits are observed within the
  context of classroom
• specific questions are asked of students about a
  particular task
• gathers information about previewing, organizing,
  and problem solving, and rehearsing

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• Study Skills Counseling Evaluation SSCE
• 50 items assessed in study skill areas
• study time distribution
• study conditions
• taking notes
• preparing and taking examinations
• other habits attitudes
• the most common problems identified by students
  in the study were in the areas of memory and
  selective attention
• 45 of them said that a lot of times I do
  things too fast without thinking 

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Discrepancy Analysis

• traditional methods of discrepancy analysis
• years below grade level procedure
• expectancy formulas to estimate the students
  expected level of achievement

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• Standards or methods of discrepancy analysis
  simplest method is to subtract one score from
  another yielding what is called a difference
  score
• following the districts guidelines determine how
  much discrepancy has to be exhibited

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• Test with built-in discrepancy analysis systems
  measures of ability and achievement that have
  built-in procedures for determining the
  discrepancy
• many have computer programs which will help the
  scoring and analysis
• Woodcock Johnson or
• Wechsler Tests
• WIAT compared to the WISC-III

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Answering The Assessment Questions

• types of procedures
• nature of the assessment task
• documentation of specific learning abilities and
  strategies