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Home > Books > Learning Disabilities - Neurological Bases, Clinical Features and Strategies of Intervention

The Child with Learning Difficulties and His Writing: A Study of Case

Submitted: 30 May 2019 Reviewed: 16 August 2019 Published: 20 November 2019

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.89194

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The purpose of this paper is to present one child with learning difficulties writing process in multigrade rural elementary school in México. It presents Alejandro’s case. This boy lives in a rural area. He shows special educational needs about learning. He never had specialized attention because he lives in a marginalized rural area. He was integrated into regular school, but he faced some learning difficulties. He was always considered as a student who did not learn. He has coursed 2 years of preschool and 1 year of elementary school. Therefore, this text describes how child writes a list of words with and without image as support. Analysis consists to identify the child’s conceptualizations about writing, his ways of approaching, and difficulties or mistakes he makes. The results show that Alejandro identifies letters and number by using pseudo-letters and conventional letter. These letters are in an unconventional position. There is no relationship grapheme and phoneme yet, and he uses different writing rules. We consider his mistakes as indicators of the learning process.

• writing difficulties
• learning difficulties
• writing learning
• writing process
• special education

Author Information

Edgardo domitilo gerardo morales *.

• Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, National Autonomous University of Mexico, México City, México

*Address all correspondence to: [email protected]

1. Introduction

One of the purposes of Mexican education system is that students acquire conventional writing during first grades in elementary school [ 1 ]. This purpose consists of students to understand the alphabetical code, its meaning, and functionality. In this way, they can integrate into a discursive community.

The elementary school teacher teaches a heterogeneous group of children [ 1 ,  2 ]. Some students show different acquisition levels of the writing. This is due to literacy environment that the family and society provide. Thus, some children have had great opportunities to interact with reading and writing practices than others. Therefore, some students do not learn the alphabetical principle of writing at the end of the scholar year. They show characteristics of initial or intermediate acquisition level of the writing. In this way, it is difficult for children to acquire writing at the same time, at the term indicated by educational system or teachers.

In addition, there may be children with learning difficulties in the classroom. Department of Special Education teaches some children. Students with special educational needs show more difficulties to learn than their classmates [ 3 ]. They require more resources to achieve the educational objectives. These authors point out that special educational needs are relative. These needs arise between students’ personal characteristics and their environment. Therefore, any child may have special educational needs, even if he/she does not have any physical disability. However, some students with learning difficulties do not have a complete assessment about their special educational needs. On the one hand, their school is far from urban areas; on the other hand, there are not enough teachers of special education for every school. In consequence, school teachers do not know their students’ educational needs and teach in the same way. Thereby, students with learning difficulties do not have the necessary support in the classroom.

Learning difficulties of writing may be identified easily. Children with special educational needs do not learn the alphabetical principle of writing easily; that is, they do not relate phoneme with grapheme. Therefore, children show their conceptualizations about writing in different ways. Sometimes, teachers censor their students’ written productions because they do not write in a conventional way. Children with special educational needs are stigmatized in the classroom. They are considered as less favored. At the end of the scholar year, children do not pass.

Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to present one child with special educational needs writing process in a Mexican multigrade rural school. This text describes how the child writes a list of words with and without image as support. Analysis consists to identify the child’s conceptualizations about writing [ 4 ], his ways of approaching, and difficulties or mistakes he makes. These mistakes are the indicators of learning process [ 5 ].

This paper presents Alejandro’s case. This boy lives in a rural area. He shows special educational needs about learning. He never had specialized attention because he lives in a marginalized rural area. He was integrated into regular school, but he faced some learning difficulties. He was always considered as a student who does not learn. Therefore, this text describes Alejandro’s writing, what he does after 2 years of preschool and 1 year of elementary school.

2. Children with learning difficulties and their diagnosis

According to the National Institute for the Evaluation of Education [ 6 ], Mexican education system provides basic education (preschool, elementary, and secondary school) for students with special educational needs. There are two types of special attention: Center of Multiple Attention (CAM, in Spanish) and Units of Service and Support to Regular Education (USAER, in Spanish). In the first one, children with special educational needs go to this Center. These children receive attention according to basic education and their educational needs. In the second, specialized teachers on special education go to school and provide support to students. These teachers provide information to school teachers too. In this way, there is educational equity and inclusion in Mexican school [ 7 ].

Physical appearance : Teacher describes the child’s physical characteristics. These features indicate the type of food the student eats, care his or her person, the parents’ attention, among other elements.

Behavior observed during the assessment : In this section, the teacher should record the conditions in which the assessment was carried out: child’s attitude, behavior, and interest.

Child’s development history : This section presents conditions in which pregnancy developed, physical development (ages in which child held his/her head, sat, crawled, walked, etc.), language development (verbal response to sounds and voices, age in which said his/her first words and phrases, etc.), family (characteristics of their family and social environment, frequent activities, etc.), hetero-family history (vision, hearing, etc.), medical history (health conditions, diseases, etc.), and scholar history (age at which he/she started school, type of school, difficulties, etc.).

Present condition : In this, there are four aspects:

It refers to student’s general aspects: intellectual area (information processing, attention, memory, understanding, etc.), motor development area (functional skills to move, take objects, position of his/her body, etc.), communicative-linguistic area (phonological, semantic, syntactic and pragmatic levels), adaptation and social interaction area (the child’s skills to initiate or maintain relationships with others), and emotional area (the way of perceiving the world and people). In each one, it mentions the instruments he suggests, although there is not enough information about them [ 3 ].

The second aspect is the curricular competence level. Teacher identifies what the student is capable of doing in relation to established purposes and contents by official curriculum.

The third aspect is about the learning style and motivation to learn. It presents physical-environmental conditions where the child works, their interests, level attention, strategies to solve a task, and the incentives he receives.

The fourth aspect is information about the student’s environment: factors of the school, family, and social context that influence the child’s learning.

Psycho-pedagogical assessment allows to identify children’s general educational needs. In this way, the school teacher could have information about the students’ difficulties. However, it is a general assessment. It contains several aspects and does not go deeper into one.

Therefore, this paper does not propose a new assessment. It consists of presenting one child’s writing difficulties, his ways of conceptualizing writing, and some mistakes he gets to make.

3. Students with learning difficulties and their scholar integration

Since 1993, Mexican system education has tried to offer special education services to students with special educational needs in basic education [ 8 ]. The first step was to promote the integration of these children in regular education classrooms. However, only insertion of the student in the school was achieved. Therefore, the system of education searched for mechanisms to provide advice to teacher. In this way, student with learning difficulties can be attended at the same time in the classroom [ 8 ].

Educational integration has been directly associated with attention of students with learning difficulties, with or without physical disabilities [ 8 ]. However, this process implies a change in the school. For this, it is necessary to provide information and to create awareness to the educational community, permanent updating of teachers, joint work between teacher, family, and specialized teachers.

At present, Mexican education system looks at educational integration as process in which every student with learning difficulties is supported individually [ 9 ]. Adapting the curriculum to the child is the purpose of educational integration.

Curricular adequacy is one of the actions to support students with learning difficulties [ 10 , 11 ]. This is an individualized curriculum proposal. Its purpose is to attend the students’ special educational needs [ 3 ]. At present, Mexican education system indicates that there should be a curricular flexibility to promote learning processes. However, it is important to consider what the child knows about particular knowledge.

Regarding the subject of the acquisition of written language, it is necessary to know how the children build their knowledge about written. It is not possible to make a curricular adequacy if teachers do not have enough information about their students. However, children are considered as knowledge builders. Therefore, there are learning difficulties at the process.

4. Alejandro’s case

This section presents Alejandro’s personal information. We met him when we visited to his school for other research purposes. We focused on him because the boy was silent in class. He was always in a corner of the work table and did not do the activities. For this, we talked with his teacher and his mother to know more about him.

Alejandro is a student of an elementary multigrade rural school. He was 7 years old at the time of the study. He was in the second grade of the elementary school. His school is located in the region of the “Great Mountains” of the state of Veracruz, Mexico. It is a rural area, marginalized. To get to this town from the municipal head, it is necessary to take a rural taxi for half an hour. Then, you have to walk on a dirt road for approximately 50 min.

Alejandro’s family is integrated by six people. He is the third of the four sons. He lives with his parents. His house is made of wood. His father works in the field: farming of corn, beans, and raising of sheep. His mother is a housewife and also works in the field. They have a low economic income. Therefore, they receive a scholarship. One of his older brothers also showed learning difficulties at school. His mother says both children have a learning problem. But, they do not have any money for attending their sons’ learning difficulties. In addition, there are no special institutes near their house.

The boy has always shown learning difficulties. He went to preschool for 2 years. However, he did not develop the necessary skills at this level. At classes, this child was silent, without speaking. Preschool teachers believed that he was mute. Nevertheless, at scholar recess, he talked with his classmates. Alejandro was slow to communicate with words in the classroom.

When he started elementary school, Alejandro continued to show learning difficulties. At classes, he was silent too. He just watched what his classmates did. He did not do anything in the class. He took his notebook out of his backpack and just made some lines. Occasionally, he talked with his classmates. When the teacher asked him something, Alejandro did not answer. He looked down and did not answer. He just ducked his head and stayed for several minutes.

When Alejandro was in second grade, he did different activities than his classmates. His teacher drew some drawings for him and he painted these drawings. Other occasions, the teacher wrote some letters for him to paint. The child did every exercise during several hours. He did not finish his exercises quickly. Sometimes he painted some drawings during 2 h.

Although Alejandro requires specialized attention, he has not received it. He has not had a full psycho-pedagogical assessment at school by specialized teachers. His school does not have these teachers. Also, the child was not submitted to neurological structural examination or neurophysiological studies to exclude an organic origin of his learning difficulties. His parents do not have enough financial resources to do this type of study for him. In addition, one specialized institution that can do this type of study for free is in Mexico City. It is so far from child’s house. It would be expensive for the child’s parents. Therefore, he is only attended as a regular school student.

For this reason, this paper is interested in the boy’s writing process. This is because Alejandro coursed 2 years of preschool and 1 year of elementary school; however, he does not show a conventional writing yet. In this way, it is interesting to analyze his conceptualizations about writing and difficulties he experiences.

5. Methodology

The purpose of this paper is to know the child’s ways to approach writing spontaneously and his knowledge about the writing system. For this, the author used a clinical interview. He took into account the research interview guide “Analysis of Disturbances in the Learning Process of Reading and Writing” [ 12 ].

The clinical interview was conducted individually. We explored four points, but we only present two in this text: to write words and to write for image.

Interviewer took the child to the library room at school. There were no other students. First, the interviewer gave the child a sheet and asked to write his name. Alejandro wrote his name during long time. Interviewer only asked what it says there. He answered his name: “Alejandro.” Next, the interviewer asked the child to write some letters and numbers he knew. Alejandro wrote them. The interviewer asked about every letter and number. The child answered “letter” or “number,” and its name.

To write words : The interviewer asked the child to write a group of words from the same semantic field in Spanish (because Alejandro is from Mexico) and one sentence. Order of words was from highest to lowest number of syllables. In this case, interviewer used semantic field of animals. Therefore, he used following words: GATO (cat), MARIPOSA (butterfly), CABALLO (horse), PERRO (dog), and PEZ (fish). The sentence was: EL GATO BEBE LECHE (The cat drinks milk). The interviewer questioned every written word. He asked the child to show with his finger how he says in every written production.

To write for image : This task was divided into two parts. The first analyzed the size and second analyzed the number.

Interviewer used the following image cards: horse-bird and giraffe-worm ( Figure 1 ). Every pair of cards represents a large animal and a small animal.

Cards with large and small animals.

The purpose of this first task was to explore how the child writes when he looks at two images of animals with different size. The animal names have three syllables in Spanish: CA-BA-LLO (horse), PA-JA-RO (bird), etc. In this way, we can see how the child writes.

The interviewer used the following pair of cards for second task ( Figure 2 ).

Cards for singular and plural.

First card shows one animal (singular) and the second shows some animals (plural). In this way, we search to explore how the child produces his writings when he observes one or more objects, if there are similarities or differences to write.

The interviewer asked what was in every card. Next, he asked the child to write something. Alejandro wrote something in every picture. Afterward, the interviewer asked the child to read every word that he wrote. Child pointed with his finger what he wrote.

After, the interview was transcribed for analysis. We read the transcription. The author analyzed every written production. He identified the child’s conceptualizations about writing. He compared the written production and what the child said. In this way, the analysis did not only consist to identify the level of writing development. This text describes the child’s writing, the ways in which he conceptualizes the writing, the difficulties he experienced to write, and his interpretations about writing.

6. Alejandro’s writing

This section describes Alejandro’s writing process. As we already mentioned, Alejandro is 7 years old and he studies in the second grade of the elementary school. His teacher says the child should have a conventional writing, because he has already coursed 1 year of elementary school, but it is not like that. Most of his classmates write a conventional way, but he does not.

We organized this section in three parts. The first part presents how Alejandro wrote his name and how he identifies letters and numbers; the second part refers to the writing of words; and the third part is writing for picture.

6.1 Alejandro writes his name and some letters and numbers

The first part of the task consisted of Alejandro writing his name and some letters and numbers he knows. His name was requested for two reasons. The first reason is to identify the sheet, because the interviewer interviewed other children in the same school. Also, it was necessary to identify every written productions of the group of students. The second reason was to observe the way he wrote his name and how he identified letters and numbers.

The interviewer asked the child to write his name at the top of the sheet. When the interviewer said the instructions, Alejandro was thoughtful during a long time. He was not pressed or interrupted. He did not do anything for several seconds. The child looked at the sheet and looked at everywhere. After time, he took the pencil and wrote the following on the sheet ( Figure 3 ).

Alejandro’s name.

The interviewer looked at Alejandro’s writing. He asked if something was lacking. The interviewer was sure that Alejandro knew his name and his writing was not complete. However, Alejandro was thoughtful, and looked at the sheet for a long time. The interviewer asked if his name was already complete. The child answered “no.” The interviewer asked the child if he remembered his name. Alejandro denied with his head. So, they continued with another task.

Alejandro has built the notion of his name. We believe that he has had some opportunities to write his name. Perhaps, his teacher has asked him to write his name on his notebooks, as part of scholar work in the classroom. We observed that Alejandro used letters with conventional sound value. This is because he wrote three initial letters of his name: ALJ (Alejandro). The first two letters correspond to the beginning of his name. Then, he omits “E” (ALE-), and writes “J” (ALJ). However, Alejandro mentions that he does not remember the others. This may show that he has memorized his name, but at that moment he failed to remember the others, or, these letters are what he remembers.

Subsequently, the interviewer asked Alejandro to write some letters and numbers he knew. The sequence was: a letter, a number, a letter, another letter, and number. In every Alejandro’ writing, the interviewer asked the child what he wrote. In this way, Alejandro wrote the following ( Figure 4 ).

Letters and numbers written by Alejandro.

For this task, Alejandro wrote for a long time. He did not hurry to write. He looked at sheet and wrote. The child looked at the interviewer, looked at the sheet again and after a few seconds he wrote. The interviewer asked about every letter or number.

We can observe that Alejandro differentiates between letter and number. He wrote correctly in every indication. That is, when the interviewer asked him to write a letter or number, he did so, respectively. In this way, Alejandro knows what he needs to write a word and what is not, what is for reading and what is not.

Also, we can observe that the child shows a limited repertoire of letters. He did not write consonants. He used only vowels: A (capital and lower) and E (lower). It shows us that he differentiates between capital and lower letter. Also, he identifies what vowels and letters are because the child answered which they were when the interviewer asked about them.

6.2 Writing words from the same semantic field

Asking the child to write words spontaneously is a way to know what he knows or has built about the writing system [ 12 ]. Although we know Alejandro presents learning difficulties and has not consolidated a conventional writing, it is necessary to ask him to write some words. This is for observing and analyzing what he is capable of writing, what knowledge he has built, as well as the difficulties he experiences.

The next picture presents what Alejandro wrote ( Figure 5 ). We wrote the conventional form in Spanish next to every word. We wrote these words in English in the parentheses too.

List of words written by Alejandro.

At the beginning of the interview, Alejandro did not want to do the task. He was silent for several seconds. He did not write anything. He looked at the sheet and the window. The interviewer insisted several times and suspended the recording to encourage the child to write. Alejandro mentioned he could not write, because he did not know the letters and so he would not do it. However, the interviewer insisted him. After several minutes, Alejandro took the pencil and started to write.

Alejandro wrote every word for 1 or 2 min. He required more seconds or minutes sometimes. He looked at the sheet and his around. He was in silence and looking at the sheet other times. We identified that he needs time to write. This shows that he feels insecure and does not know something for writing. He feels insecure because he was afraid of being wrong and that he was punished by the interviewer for it. It may be that in class he is penalized when he makes a mistake. There is ignorance because he does not know some letters, and he has a low repertoire of the writing system. Thus, Alejandro needs to think about writing and look for representing it. Therefore, this is why the child needs more time to write.

We identified that the child does not establish a phoneme-grapheme relationship. He only shows with his finger from left to right when he read every word. He does not establish a relationship with the letters he used. In each word, there is no correspondence with the number of letters. The child also does not establish a constant because there is variation in number and variety of letters sometimes.

Alejandro used letters unrelated to the conventional writing of the words. For example, when he wrote GATO (cat), Alejandro used the following letters: inpnAS. It is possible to identify that no letter corresponds to the word. Perhaps, Alejandro wrote those letters because they are recognized or remembered by him.

Alejandro shows a limited repertoire of conventional letters. This is observed when he uses four vowels: A, E, I, O. The child used these vowels less frequently. There is one vowel in every word at least. When Alejandro wrote PEZ (fish), he used two vowels. We observed that he writes these vowels at the beginning or end of the word. However, we do not know why he places them that way. Maybe this is a differentiating principle by him.

There is qualitative and quantitative differentiation in Alejandro’s writing. That is, he did not write any words in the same way. All the words written by him are different. Every word has different number and variety of letters. When two words contain the same number of letter, they contain different letters.

When Alejandro wrote MARIPOSA (butterfly), he used five letters. The number of letters is less than what he used for GATO (cat). Maybe he wrote that because the interviewer said “butterfly is a small animal.” This is because the cat is bigger than the butterfly. Therefore, it may be possible that he used lesser letters for butterfly.

In Spanish, PERRO (dog) contains five letters. Alejandro wrote five letters. In this case, Alejandro’s writing corresponds to the necessary number of letters. However, it seems that there is no writing rules for him. This is for two reasons: first, because there is no correspondence with the animal size. Horse is larger than dog and Alejandro required lesser letters for horse than for dog. Second, CABALLO (horse) is composed by three syllables and PERRO (dog) by two. Alejandro used more letters to represent two syllables. In addition, it is observed that there is a pseudo-letter. It looks like an inverted F, as well as D and B, horizontally.

When Alejandro wrote PEZ (fish), the interviewer first asked how many letters he needed to write that word. The child did not answer. Interviewer asked for this again and student said that he did not know. Then, interviewer said to write PEZ (fish). For several minutes, Alejandro just looked the sheet and did not say anything. The interviewer questioned several times, but he did not answer. After several minutes, Alejandro wrote: E. The interviewer asked the child if he has finished. He denied with his head. After 1 min, he started to write. We observed that his writing contains six letters. Capital letters are predominated.

Alejandro used inverted letters in three words. They may be considered as pseudo-letters. However, if we observe carefully they are similar to conventional letters. The child has written them in different positions: inverted.

May be there is a writing rule by Alejandro. His words have a minimum of four letters and a maximum of six letters. This rule has been established by him. There is no relation to the length of orality or the object it represents.

We can identify that Alejandro shows a primitive writing [ 4 ]. He is still in writing system learning process. The phoneticization process is not present yet. The child has not achieved this level yet. He only uses letters without a conventional sound value. There is no correspondence to phoneme-grapheme, and he uses pseudo-letters sometimes.

6.3 To write for image

Write for image allows us to know what happens when the child writes something in front of an image [ 12 ]. It is identified if there is the same rules used by the child, number of letters, or if there is any change when he writes a new word. It may happen that the length of the words is related to the size of the image or the number of objects presented. In this way, we can identify the child’s knowledge and difficulties when he writes some words.

6.3.1 The image size variable

The first task is about observing how the child writes when he is in front of two different sized images. That is, we want to identify if the image size influences on his writings. Therefore, two pairs of cards were presented to Alejandro. Every pair of cards contained two animals, one small and one large. The interviewer asked Alejandro to write the name on each one ( Figure 6 ).

Horse and bird writing.

Based on the writing produced by Alejandro, we mentioned the following:

Alejandro delimits his space to write. When he wrote for first pair of words, the child drew a wide rectangle and he made an oval and several squares for the second pair of words. The child wrote some letters to fill those drawn spaces. It seems that Alejandro’s rule is to fill the space and not only represent the word.

When Alejandro writes the words, we identified that he presents difficulty in the conventional directionality of writing. He wrote most of words from left to right (conventional directionality), but he wrote some words from right to left (no conventional). For example, the child started to write the second word on the left. He wrote seven letters. He looked at the sheet for some seconds. After, he continued to write other letters on the right. He wrote and completed the space he had left, from right to left.

Alejandro shows two ways to write: left–right (conventional) and right–left (no conventional). When he wrote the last word, the child wrote one letter under another. There was no limited space on the sheet. Alejandro wrote it there. The child has not learned the writing directionality.

When we compared Alejandro’s writings, we identified that the number of letters used by him does not correspond to the image size. Although the images were present and he looked them when he wrote, the child took into account other rules to write. The six names of animals had three syllables in Spanish and Alejandro used nine letters for CABALLO (horse) and eleven for PÁJARO (bird). The letters used by him are similar to the conventional ones. However, these are in different positions. There are no phonetic correspondences with the words. The child shows a primitive writing. Alejandro has not started the level of relation between phoneme and grapheme yet. We can believe that the boy wrote some letters to cover the space on the sheet. Alejandro takes into account the card size instead of the image size.

After writing a list of words, the interviewer asked Alejandro to read and point out every word he wrote. The purpose of this task is to observe how the child relates his writing to the sound length of the word. When Alejandro read CABALLO (horse), he pointed out as follows ( Figure 7 ).

Alejandro reads “caballo” (horse).

Alejandro reads every word and points out what he reads. In this way, he justifies what he has written. In the previous example, Alejandro reads the first syllable and points out the first letter, second syllable with the second letter. At this moment, he gets in conflict when he tries to read the third syllable. It would correspond to the third letter. However, “there are more letters than he needs.” When he reads the word, he shows the beginning of phoneticization: relation between one syllable with one letter. This is the syllabic writing principle [ 4 ]. Nevertheless, he has written more letters. Therefore, Alejandro says “o” in the other letters. In this way, we can point out that Alejandro justifies every letters and there is a correspondence between what he reads and what he writes.

When Alejandro reads the second word, the child pointed out as follows ( Figure 8 ).

Alejandro reads “pájaro” (bird).

Alejandro makes a different correspondence syllable-letter than the first word. Although his writing was in two ways, his reading is only one direction: from left to right. The first syllable is related to first three letters he wrote. The second syllable is related to the fourth letter. But, he faces the same problem as in the previous word: “there are many letters.” So he justifies the other letters as follows. He reads the third syllable in relation to the sixth and seventh letter. And, reads “o” for the other letters.

When interviewer showed the next pair of cards, Alejandro wrote as following ( Figure 9 ).

Giraffe and worm writing by Alejandro.

When the interviewer shows the pair of cards to Alejandro, the child said “It’s a zebra.” So, the interviewer said “It’s a giraffe and it’s a worm” and pointed out every card. The interviewer asked Alejandro to write the name of every animal. First, the child draws a rectangle across the width of the sheet. Next, he started to write on the left side inside the rectangle. He said the first syllable “JI” while writing the first letter. After, he said “ra,” he wrote a hyphen. Then, he said “e” and wrote another letter. At that moment, he looked at the sheet and filled the space he left with some letters ( Figure 10 ).

Giraffe writing.

Alejandro shows different rules of writing. These rules are not the same as previous. He delimited the space to write and filled the space with some letters. The child tries to relate the syllable with one letter, but he writes others. There is a limited repertoire of letters too. In this case, it seems that he used the same letters: C capital and lower letter, A capital and lower letter, and O. We believe that he uses hyphens to separate every letter. However, when he wrote the first hyphen, it reads the second syllable. We do not know why he reads there. Alejandro had tried to use conventional letters. He uses signs without sound value. In addition, there is no relation phoneme and grapheme.

When Alejandro wrote GUSANO (worm), he drew a rectangle and divided it into three small squares. Then, he drew other squares below the previous ones. After, he began to write some letters inside the squares, as seen in the following picture ( Figure 11 ).

Worm writing.

Alejandro used other rules to write. They are different than the previous. Alejandro has written one or two letters into every box. At the end, he writes some letters under the last box. There is no correspondence between what he reads and writes. There are also no fixed rules of writing for him. Rather, it is intuited that he draws the boxes to delimit his space to write.

6.3.2 Singular and plural writing

The next task consists to write singular and plural. For this, the interviewer showed Alejandro the following images ( Figure 12 ).

Cards with one cat and four cats.

Alejandro drew an oval for first card. This oval is on the left half of the sheet. He wrote the following ( Figure 13 ).

Alejandro writes GATO (cat).

Next, the interviewer asked Alejandro to write for the second card, in plural. For this, Alejandro draws another oval from the middle of the sheet, on the right side. The child did not do anything for 1 h 30 min. After this time, he wrote some different letters inside the oval ( Figure 14 ). He wrote from right to left (unconventional direction).

Alejandro writes GATOS (cats).

Alejandro wrote in the opposite conventional direction: from right to left. He tried to cover the delimited space by him. His letters are similar to the conventional ones. Also, there are differences between the first and the second word. He used lesser letters for first word than the second. That is, there are lesser letters for singular and more letters for plural. Perhaps, the child took into account the number of objects in the card.

The writing directionality may have been influenced by the image of the animals: cats look at the left side. Alejandro could have thought he was going to write from right to left, as well as images of the cards. Therefore, it is necessary to research how he writes when objects look at the right side. In this way, we can know if this influences the directionality of Alejandro’s writing.

With the next pair of images ( Figure 15 ), the interviewer asked Alejandro to write CONEJO (rabbit) and CONEJOS (rabbits).

Cards with one rabbit and three rabbits.

Alejandro draws a rectangle in the middle of the sheet for the first card (rabbit). He said “cone” (rab-) and wrote the first letter on the left of the sheet. Then, he said “jo” (bit) and wrote the second letter. He said “jo” again and wrote the third letter. He was thoughtful for some seconds. He started to write other letters. His writing is as follows ( Figure 16 ).

Alejandro writes CONEJO (rabbit).

At the beginning, Alejandro tries to relate the syllables of the word with first two letters. However, he justifies the other letters when he read the word. There is no exact correspondence between the syllable and the letter. As well as his writing is to fill the space he delimited.

Alejandro takes into account other rules for plural writing. He drew a rectangle across the width of the sheet. Starting on the left, he said “CO” and wrote one letter. Then, he said “NE” and drew a vertical line. After, he said “JO” and wrote other letters. His writing is as follows ( Figure 17 ).

Alejandro writes CONEJOS (rabbits).

Alejandro writes both words differently. He reads CONEJO (rabbit) for first word and CONEJOS (rabbits) for the second. Both words are different from each other. But, he wrote them with different rules. This is confusing for us because there are vertical lines between every two letters in the second word. We believe that the child tried to represent every object, although he did not explain it.

In summary, Alejandro shows different writings. He used pseudo-letters and conventional letter. These letters are in unconventional positions. There is no relationship between grapheme and phoneme yet; and, he uses different writing rules.

7. Conclusions

We described Alejandro’s writing process. According to this description, we can note the following:

Alejandro is a student of an elementary regular school. He presents learning difficulties. He could not write “correctly.” However, he did not have a full assessment by specialized teachers. His school is so far from urban areas and his parents could not take him to a special institution. Therefore, he has not received special support. Also, there is not a favorable literacy environment in his home. His teacher teaches him like his classmates. Usually, he has been marginalized and stigmatized because “he does not know or work in class.”

We focused on Alejandro because he was a child who was always distracted in class. We did not want to show his writing mistakes as negative aspects, but as part of his learning process. Errors are indicators of a process [ 5 ]. They inform the person’s skills. They allow to identify the knowledge that is being used [ 13 ]. In this way, errors can be considered as elements with a didactic value.

Alejandro showed some knowledge and also some difficulties to write. The child identifies and distinguishes letters and numbers. We do not know if he conceptualizes their use in every one. When he wrote, he shows his knowledge: letters are for reading, because he did not use any number in the words.

The writing directionality is a difficulty for Alejandro. He writes from left to right and also from right to left. We do not know why he did that. We did not research his reasons. But, it is important to know if there are any factors that influence the child to write like this.

The student does not establish a phoneme-grapheme relationship yet. He is still in an initial level to writing acquisition. He uses conventional letters and pseudo-letters to write. There are no fixed rules to write: number and variety of letters. However, we observed student’s thought about writing. He justifies his writings when he reads them and invents letters to represent some words.

There is still a limited repertoire of letters. He used a few letters of the alphabet. Therefore, Alejandro needs to interact with different texts, rather than teaching him letter by letter. Even if “he does not know those letters.” In this way, he is going to appropriate other elements and resources of the writing system.

Time he takes to write is an important element for us. He refused to write for several minutes at the beginning. After, he wrote during 1 or 2 min every word. As we mentioned previously, we believe that Alejandro did not feel sure to do the task. Perhaps, he thought that the interviewer is going to penalize for his writing “incorrectly.” He felt unable to write. Therefore, it is important that children’s mistakes are not censored in the classroom. Mistakes let us to know the child’s knowledge and their learning needs.

We considered that class work was not favorable for Alejandro. He painted letters, drawings, among others. These were to keep him busy. Therefore, it is important for the child to participate in reading and writing practices. In this way, he can be integrated into the scholar activities and is not segregated by his classmates.

About children with learning difficulties, it is important that these children write as they believe. Do not censor their writings. They are not considered as people incapable. It is necessary to consider that learning is a slow process. Those children will require more time than their classmates.

Special education plays an important role in Mexico. However, rather than attending to the student with learning difficulties in isolation, it is necessary that the teacher should be provided with information and the presence of specialized teachers in the classroom. In this way, the student with learning difficulties can be integrated into class, scholar activities, and reading and writing practices.

We presented Alejandro’s writing process in this paper. Although he was considered as a child with learning difficulties, we identified he shows some difficulties, but he knows some elements of the writing system too.

Acknowledgments

I thank Alejandro, his parents, and his teacher for the information they provided to me about him.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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• 4. Ferreiro E, Teberosky A. Los Sistemas de Escritura en el Desarrollo del Niño. México, D.F.: Editorial Siglo XXI; 1979. ISBN 968-23-1578-6
• 5. Dolz J, Gagnon R, Vuillet Y. Production écrite et Difficultés D’apprentisage. Genève: Carnets des Sciences de L’education. Université de Genéve; 2011. ISBN: 2-940195-44-7
• 6. INEE. Panorama Educativo de México. Indicadores del Sistema Educativo Nacional 2017. Educación Básica y Media Superior. México: Instituto Nacional para la Evaluación de la Educación; 2018
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• 8. SEP. Orientaciones Generales Para el Funcionamiento de los Servicios de Educación Especial. México: Secretaria de Educación Pública; 2016. ISBN: 970-57-0016-8
• 9. SEP. Estrategia de Equidad e Inclusión en la Educación Básica: Para Alumnos con Discapacidad, Aptitudes Sobresalientes y Dificultades Severas de Aprendizaje, Conducta o Comunicación. México, DF: Secretaria de Educación Pública; 2018
• 10. Durán M. Las Adecuaciones Curriculares Individuales: Hacia la Equidad en Educación Especial. México: Secretaría de Educación Pública; 2016. ISBN 968-9082-33-7
• 11. CONAFE. Discapacidad Intelectual. Guía Didáctica Para la Inclusión en Educación Inicial y Básica. México: Secretaria de Educación Pública; 2010
• 12. Ferreiro E, Gómez M. Análisis de las Perturbaciones en el Proceso de Aprendizaje de la Lecto-Escritura. Fascículo 1. México: SEP-DGEE; 1982
• 13. Vaca J. Así Leen (Textos) los Niños. Textos Universitarios. México: Universidad Veracruzana; 2006. ISBN: 968-834-753-1

© 2019 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Learning disabilities.

Published: 17 June 2020

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LEARNING DISABILITY : A CASE STUDY

The present investigation was carried out on a girl name Harshita who has been identified with learning disability. She is presently studying at ‘Udaan’ a school for the special children in Shimla. The girl was brought to this special school from the normal school where she was studying earlier when the teachers and parents found it difficult to teach the child with other normal children. The learning disability the child faces is in executive functioning i.e. she forgets what she has memorized. When I met her I was taken away by her sweet and innocent ways. She is attentive and responsible but the only problem is that she forgets within minutes of having learnt something. Key words : learning disability, executive functioning, remedial teaching

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Case study 1: “Open source AAC in the ECA Region”

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Case study 4: “Early childhood intervention in the ECA region”

Case study 5: “Deinstitutionalization in the ECA region”

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Cognitive style and working memory among adolescents with specific learning disability

Monica daniel.

Department of Psychology, Central University of Karnataka, Kalaburagi, Karnataka, India

Romate John

Eslavath rajkumar, allen joshua george.

1 Department of Humanities and Applied Sciences, Indian Institute of Management, Ranchi, Jharkhand, India

John Abraham

2 Department of Family Medicine/Geriatrics, St. John's Medical College, Bangalore, Karnataka, India

BACKGROUND:

In a world where education directly influences the quality of life of an individual, educational handicaps are a grave issue that plagues the lives of those affected. The current study aims to find out whether there is a difference in the cognitive style and working memory capacity among adolescents with specific learning disability (SLD) in comparison to their age-matched equivalent group without SLD. The study also targets to find out if there exists any relationship between cognitive style and working memory.

MATERIALS AND METHODS:

A total of sixty participants were selected (thirty adolescents with learning disability and thirty age-matched adolescents without learning disability) from Bangalore district of Karnataka and Thrissur district of Kerala using purposive sampling method. The tools used were the Indian adaptation of Embedded Figures Test by Nigam (1997) and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Fourth Edition by Wechsler (2003).

The results showed that there exists a significant difference in cognitive style dimensions of field dependence and independence between adolescents with learning disability (M = 11.6, standard deviation [SD] = 6.52) and adolescents without learning disability (M = 25.2, SD = 7.33) as well as in the working memory capacity between adolescents with learning disability (M = 66.7, SD = 19.26) and adolescents without learning disability (M = 102, SD = 14.93) groups under study (p < 0.01). The results also indicate that there exists no significant relationship between cognitive style and working memory.

CONCLUSION:

Adolescents with SLD was found to be field dependent and has low working memory capacity than adolescents without learning disability. The results reflect the need for developing cognitive interventions to enhance working memory capacity and cognitive style for helping adolescents with learning disability in all areas of their functioning, such that the society benefits as a whole.

Introduction

Education is the knowledge, skill, and overall understanding that individuals attain through a formal educational system for their corresponding success in almost all dimensions of life. Any handicap to such a growth or areas of functioning is a matter of concern to majority of people.[ 1 ] Of all the problems that have an implication on educational handicap, academic underachievement is a major issue of all time. Specific learning disability (SLD) is viewed as one among the major hindrances to academic achievement among children, though most often it goes unrecognized because of lack of awareness among teachers and parents as well as limited resources in the community.[ 2 ] SLDs are a generic term that refers “to a heterogeneous group of neurobehavioral disorders manifested by significant unexpected, specific, and persistent difficulties in the acquisition and use of efficient reading (dyslexia), writing (dysgraphia), or mathematical (dyscalculia) abilities despite conventional instruction, intact senses, normal intelligence, proper motivation, and adequate sociocultural opportunity.”[ 3 ] One of the most recent prevalence studies of SLDs by Nayana and Justine (2018) reported that 10% of school-going children in India have SLD.[ 4 ]

As most of the researches in the arena of learning disability came up with findings indicating cognitive deficits in such children, it becomes crucial for investigating the relationship between cognitive constructs influencing learning disability, related academic achievements as well as those constructs which are modifiable to a great extent. One such construct that had been extensively researched is the cognitive style, which refers to the way individual's structure stimuli so that the world takes on psychological meaning.[ 5 ] Among the different models of cognitive style, field dependency and independency are the dimensions which are proved to be one among the factors influencing an individual's educational achievement.[ 6 ]

Cognitive style is defined as the relatively stable strategies, preferences, and attitudes that determine an individual's typical modes of perceiving, remembering, and problem-solving, and the theory of cognitive style that has been widely researched is the dependence-field-independence cognitive style.[ 7 ]

Field dependence/field independence cognitive style is a construct which refers to individual's ability to recognize or trace out a specific figure embedded in a complex background. Individuals who are capable of tracing the embedded figures to a great extent fall under the field-independent category and those who cannot trace out these figures to an appreciable extent fall under field-dependent category.[ 8 ]

Field-independent learner performs exceptionally well in classroom tasks involving analysis, attention to details, and other activities which require concentration. On the other end, field-dependent learners are found to be more successful than the independent one in everyday activities like better ability in language use yielding to good interpersonal communication skills beyond the constraints of the classroom.[ 9 ]

From prior empirical evidences, it was also found that based on the cognitive style, there is a difference in student's academic performance.[ 10 ] The inclusion of a comparative group without learning disability in this study was, therefore, to find out if there is any difference in the cognitive style dimension between adolescents with and without SLDs which could influence their academic performance.

The cognitive processes of children with learning disability have significant influences on their learning processes. One of the most addressed areas of cognitive functioning in specific learning disabled is the deficits in working memory functioning. Working memory can be conceptualized as a short-term storage component with a capacity limit that is heavily dependent on attention and other central executive processes that make the use of stored information or that interact with long-term memory.[ 11 ] The issues manifested because of deficits in various memory processes are low academic skills.[ 12 ] In dyslexia, for example, common deficits found were in phonological processing, and working memory (verbal). Intervention programs addressing these deficit areas have shown significant improvements among poor readers.[ 13 ] Researches carried out in the area of dyscalculia are not as extensive as that in dyslexia. Still, research evidences indicate that there exist deficits in visual and verbal working memory and executive function. The accompanying difficulties include issues with fluency, problem-solving, and number sequence.[ 14 ]

Empirical evidences have found that the overall learning behavior is greatly influenced by the interaction of cognitive style and working memory abilities.[ 15 ] Therefore, the ground on which the research questions were framed for this study focused on finding a relationship between both these cognitive constructs to academic performance specifically in adolescents with SLD. Previous studies have not tried to explore in depth the correlation among these concepts and in particular to learning disability population. The current study design also incorporates a comparative group comprising adolescents without any learning disability so as to give more sound empirical evidence to the results obtained. Such an attempt has not been done previously in researches. Thus, the intended outcome of this study focuses on contributing to the educational interventions for students with learning disabilities as well as their age-matched counterparts in their academic performance.

Despite earlier contention by researches that cognitive style is more of a stable characteristic, empirical evidences on the modifiability of cognitive style, especially of dependent style, are found through prior researches.[ 16 ] Cognitive intervention strategies found to be effective in the past included matching the teacher–learner cognitive style, but the strength and the extent of the effectiveness of these methods are not documented well, thus raising the ambiguity in the relationship between cognitive style dimensions and academic achievement, various reasons behind variation in cognitive style, the modifiability of certain innate cognitive constructs, and the degree of effectiveness of such modification. The number of studies addressing these questions being very limited so far, this study also aims at providing new insights to educationalists and clinicians for developing new strategies for improving in these areas of functioning as well as adding on to the existing intervention techniques.[ 17 ]

Materials and Methods

Study design and setting.

The present study adopted a correlational research design, and the study was conducted in four educational institutions in Karnataka and Kerala states of India.

Study participants and sampling

The study participants were adolescents diagnosed with specific disability and adolescents without any specific disability. All the participants in the learning disability group were drawn from S R Chandrasekhar Institute of Speech and Hearing, Bangalore, and Spell Learning Centre, Thrissur, who are diagnosed with SLD by a professional team of clinical experts. The comparative group included adolescents without SLD drawn from two private schools in the same cities. The matching of the groups was done with respect to age (12–16 years). The sample size for both the groups was 60 (30 with SLD and 30 without SLD). The sampling method adopted by the researcher was purposive sampling method. Adolescents diagnosed under the major subtypes of learning disability such as dyscalculia and dyslexia were included in the study. Adolescents diagnosed with learning disability along with other comorbid conditions such as attention deficit disorders, below-average mental ability, and any of the pervasive developmental disorders as well as those with learning disability receiving remedial intervention for more than 4 years were excluded from the study.

Data collection tool and technique

Embedded figures test.

The Indian adaptation of Embedded Figures Test (EFT) was developed by Nigam (1997). It is a perceptual test or a sort of personality test which was developed with the aim of assessing an individual's cognitive style of field independency–dependency. The test helps to measure perceptual ability, general intelligence, learning ability, sociability, and certain traits of personality. EFT is found to have test–retest reliability of 0.72 and split-half reliability of 0.76 and validity is found to be 0.79.

Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Fourth Edition

The first edition of Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) was developed by Wechsler in 1949 and the fourth edition was revised in the year 2003. It measures the intellectual ability of children aged 6–16 years. Although the full version of the scale composes of 15 subtests, only 10 are considered core and more often used when testing intelligence. In the case of learning-disabled children, the five complementary tests are used in a way to compensate for their poor performance in core subtest and find out the overall IQ profile. Working memory is one among the four indices of IQ in WISC IV. Digit span and working memory index are the two-core subtests of working memory index. The average split-half reliability coefficients ranged from 0.70 to 0.90, and the majority of the subtest scored within the range of 0.81 to 0.90, therefore assuring good reliability.

A formal permission and consent were taken from the authorities of the institution and parents for conducting the study and collecting data from participants. Rapport was established with the participants who met the inclusion criteria and their respective sociodemographic data were collected and recorded. Measurement tools such as EFT and WISC IV were administered on those participants individually by the researcher. Their responses were recorded in the recording form prepared by the researcher as per the manual. EFT required the test taker to identify and trace simple forms (i.e., shapes) that are embedded within more complex forms. The test material consists of ten cards, and one trial card. In each card, there is a design on the left side of the card. There are four alternative complex designs on the right side of the card. In one of the designs, the design on the left is hidden, which the participant needs to perceive. When administered, those participants who exhibit high levels of field dependence found it difficult to overcome background elements in the figure for formulating judgments. In general, the main purpose behind administering WISC IV among the adolescent population is to find out their intelligence level. If the child has got an average level of intelligence, only then, they proceed with further screening for learning disability. Here, the participants were provided with the three subtests from WISC. Those were the digit span, letter-number sequencing, and arithmetic which give us the aggregate score of the participant's verbal or auditory working memory. In all the three subtests, the participants were asked to carefully listen to the instructions provided verbally and perform few mental processing. Digit span and letter-number sequencing are the core subtests of working memory whereas arithmetic is a supplementary subtest which is administered if the need arises based on child's ability to perform the core subtests. The completed response sheets and the collected quantitative data were scored according to the norms and statistical analysis.

Ethical consideration

The ethical approval for the study was obtained from the Central University of Karnataka. The data collection was done by taking into consideration the major ethical guidelines of research review boards such as maintaining the anonymity of the participants and keeping results confidentially. Participants were given the right to withdraw from the study if they wished to and they were not harmed in any manner.

Data analysis

Statistical analysis of the data collected was done using the software IBM SPSS version 25 (USA). The data were analyzed using independent sample t -test and Pearson's product-moment correlation.

Table 1 shows the demographic details of participants with respect to the group which they belong to, gender, and place of residence. The frequency obtained in gender for males is 20 and for females is 10 in the learning-disabled group with a corresponding percentage of 66.70% and 33.30%, respectively. In the nonlearning-disabled group, the frequency of males is 15 and females is 15 with a corresponding percentage of 50% for both genders, respectively. Among the learning- disabled group, 63.30% and 36.70% hailed from urban and semi-urban areas with corresponding frequencies 19 and 1 respectively. For the non-learning- disabled group, equal number of participants were from urban and semi-urban areas with a frequency of 15 in each group. There wwereno representation of participants from rural areas for the current study.

The distribution of sociodemographic characteristics of participants

SD=Standard deviation

From the table, it is also observed that the researcher included adolescents with SLD in the age range between 12 and 16 years with the corresponding frequencies 9, 4, 9, 3, and 5 and percentage 30%, 16.70%, 30%, 10%, and 13.30%, respectively, and the same way researcher included adolescents without any SLD in the age range between 12 and 14 years with the corresponding frequencies 1, 9, and 20 and percentage 3.40%, 30%, and 66.60%, respectively.

Table 1 also shows the descriptive statistics of sample mean and standard deviation (SD) with respect to age. From the table, it is observed that the mean age of the sample is 13.7 and SD is 1.4.

Table 2 shows the comparison of cognitive style and working memory scores with respect to the two groups of participants, namely learning-disabled group and nonlearning-disabled group. Results show that there is a significant difference in the scores of cognitive style dimensions between adolescents with learning disability (mean = 11.6, SD = 6.52) and without learning disability (mean = 25.2, SD = 7.33). The obtained P value is 0.000 ( P < 0.01) and t -value is 7.59, and results are significant at 0.05 level.

Independent sample t -test value between learning-disabled and nonlearning-disabled groups in cognitive style and working memory

*Significant at 0.05 level, P <0.01. LD=Learning-disabled, NLD=Nonlearning-disabled, SD=Standard deviation

From the table, it can also be observed that there is a significant difference in the working memory between adolescents with learning disability (mean = 66.7, SD = 19.26) and without learning disability (mean = 102, SD = 14.93). The obtained P value is 0.000 ( P < 0.01) and t-value is 7.87, significant at 0.05 level.

Table 3 shows the correlation value of variable cognitive style with working memory. From the table, it can be observed that there exists no significant relationship between the cognitive style and working memory ( r = −0.010). This implies that the cognitive style dimensions of field dependence and independence are not correlated to the functioning of working memory.

Correlation table showing the correlation between cognitive style and working memory of adolescents with learningdisability ( n =30)

According to the scores obtained in the EFT and its interpretation norms, the scores obtained by the learning-disabled group fall in the category of field-dependent cognitive style while those in the other group obtained comparatively higher scores, with majority of them falling under the field-independent category and a few in field-dependent category. This result is in consistent with the results found in a study conducted by Sharma and Ranjan in 2018, stating that field-independent students are better in learning and comprehension.[ 10 ] Among the student population, those who find it easier to carry out this task and get good scores, i.e., who are field independent, are likely to perform better in school since school performance is also based on the ability to selectively attend to a range of information presented.[ 18 , 19 ]

Research findings also point out the link between working memory and cognitive style dimension,[ 20 ] such that learners with holistic learning style (field-dependent learners) have significantly smaller working memory than learners with serial learning style (field-dependent learners).[ 21 ] From the present study, learning-disabled adolescents were found to have significantly low working memory capacity than their normal counterparts. Thus, the current findings are in line with the evidences from studies showing the association between cognitive style and working memory functioning.[ 20 ]

Apart from the physiological and cognitive reasons that account for this difference in cognitive style dimension, literature evidences came up with the perspective of teacher–student match or classroom environment, the modification of which is indeed a great intervention implication in modifying a child's cognitive style.[ 22 ] Learning-disabled children are much more likely to approach school with a field-sensitive orientation. When classroom interaction happens between a field-independent teacher with a field-sensitive child, it can be a frustrating experience for teacher and student alike. The probable reasons could be the lack of student's comprehending capacity to the specific instruction by the teacher when there is a mismatch between student- teacher cognitive style.

Further, this would also lead to teacher not comprehending the child's failure to communicate or the unusual needs.

From the results, it was also observed that there is a significant difference in the scores of working memory between the learning-disabled and nonlearning-disabled groups. In the present study, adolescents with learning disabilities showed lower performance in the working memory test than the comparable group of those without any kind of learning disabilities. This result is in consistent with the previous research findings carried out among this population.[ 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 ] Prior studies have tried to explore the neural and cognitive basis of learning disability, and it was found that reading disability (dyslexia) is associated with deficit in phonological working memory and central executive functioning.[ 27 ]

Apart from the general understanding of working memory deficits in individuals with learning disability grounded on some cognitive deficits, few researchers came up with the finding that working memory cannot be viewed entirely on the grounds of a capacity deficit, rather for some children with learning disabilities, this could be primarily a strategy deficit.[ 28 ] That is, children with a learning disability often possess sufficient working memory resources but fail to apply effective strategies spontaneously or consistently, resulting in learning failure. Further researches are needed to confirm as this aspect as well as plan intervention taking into account the strategy deficit.

In the current study, the researcher tested the correlation between cognitive style and working memory with the aim of finding out if field dependency and independency are the reasons behind low working memory in learning- disabled students compared to the other group under study.

Since such a relationship was not found from the present study, which may be further due to reasons such as small sample size and heterogeneity of the sample collected, this difference found in working memory capacity cannot be attributed to difference in cognitive style dimensions of field dependence/independence. However, there is also evidence of difference in cognitive style dimension found between these two populations. Therefore, this difference can be due to some other unknown cognitive mechanisms or some other variables or factors which interact and influence both these variables other than those which are empirically found out.

The correlation analysis was done to find out whether there is any relationship between the variables cognitive style and working memory and it was found that there is no significant relationship between the scores of cognitive styles and working memory. In the present study, the researcher tried to explore the relationship between these variables as an implication for intervention strategies among the learning-disabled population. Hindal, Reid, and Badgaish in 2009 through their research on working memory, performance, and learner characteristics came up with the result that with respect to all learning characteristics including field independency and dependency, the learners’ working memory is significantly correlated.[ 29 ] This correlation between cognitive style and working memory is attributed to various reasons such as the working efficiency of the brain's perceptual filter, the way working memory processes as well as stores information and the way in which this information is being used by long – term memory.[ 29 ] Thus, it can be viewed that a contradictory result yielded from the present study could be because of the peculiarity of the sample under consideration, i.e., the cognitive characteristics of learning-disabled individuals.

From various researches conducted among the learning-disabled population, it is found that the working memory capacity of these individuals is low compared to their normal age-matched counterparts.[ 27 ] Further, the efficiency of perception filter and storage of information to long-term memory is influenced by working memory capacity. The interaction of three of these systems is essential in predicting to what extent an individual can process information available at hand and perceive it in the correct way according to the task demand.[ 29 ] The failure of which may produce cognitive overload in these individuals that they adopt a cognitive style which is characterized by holistic analysis of an information (field dependence) rather than analytically viewing (field independence) the details of the particular information.

Limitations of the study

The study could reveal significant aspects relating to the cognitive style dimension and working memory capacity of adolescents with learning disability even though the study acknowledges several limitations in the process of completion. The sample size taken for the study is limited and further the number of samples for each group based on age, gender, and other sociodemographic details was not comparable. If this could have been taken care of, a wide range of data could have been collected and the accuracy of results could have been further escalated.

Furthermore, if data would have been collected from a comparable group matched on the basis of IQ scores, the influence of intellectual capacity on both the variables under study could have been controlled.

Recommendations of the study

The present study can be taken forward in order to compensate the limitations and to yield more findings with interventional implications. Further researches can be conducted on the basis of this study for detailed and wide range of data. The present study can be made effective through the following measures:

The study can be replicated on large samples so that the results can be generalized. There is scope to study cognitive construct other than working memory which has got strong influence on the cognitive style dimension. This further helps in planning intervention among learning-disabled population to improve their cognitive style of field dependency to a degree which can benefit them in their academics. The study can also be done solely among adolescents without any learning disability and help them in their career planning based on their capabilities.

Implications of the study

Education revolves around the acquisition of knowledge and learning of skills, and as such, it is an indispensable rite of passage for anyone wishing to join the modern society and function well in it. Educational handicaps go on to cause bigger and bigger hurdles in the lives of those suffering from it. Hence, there is a compelling need for more and more studies aimed at understanding these handicaps better. Thus, the present study was conducted with the aim of numerous implications both in research and intervention purposes. Adolescence is the period of development wherein, according to Piaget's stages, formal operational stage begins. The hallmark cognitive development of this stage is that an individual starts to think and reason logically. Therefore, learning about the specific cognitive construct among learning-disabled adolescents which have got educational implication is very crucial for planning interventions to help them academically.

From the study, it is found that adolescents with learning disability are found to be field-dependent; this indicates that they lack the ability to analytically view a piece of information presented to them. This is a very important skill that they need to develop as they move to higher classes, as well as in almost all the practical situations. Therefore, the result of this study implicates the need for improving this aspect of adolescents with learning disability so that it would be beneficial for them in all areas of functioning. Furthermore, it is found that the intervention plans for learning-disabled individuals are largely based educational/remedial training. Thus, the result obtained from this study indicating the low working memory capacity among adolescents with learning disability compared to their normal counterparts points out specifically the need for including more cognitively based intervention plan for learning-disabled population along with educational intervention so that enough brain stimulations acquiring from cognitive training can further help them improve in academics.

The study provides the evidence that there is a difference in the cognitive style dimension of field dependence and field dependence and working memory between adolescents with SLD and without any SLD. Adolescents with SLD were found to have field-dependent cognitive style dimension and low working memory capacity and also the individual's cognitive style dimension is not related to the working memory functioning.

Financial support and sponsorship

Conflicts of interest.

There are no conflicts of interest.

Acknowledgment

The authors would like to thank the directors of all four educational institutions where the study has been carried out.