ABCs of Learning Disabilities (eBook)

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LEARNING DISABILITIES:

FROM PAST TO PRESENT

This chapter traces the history of the learning disabilities field and presents the standard gamut of topics subsumed in the history of the field. These include, but are not limited to, the origins of the learning disabilities field, the influential definitions of learning disabilities, the characteristics of individualswith learning disabilities, the condition of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and the etiology of learning disabilities. The chapter concludes with an assessment of the current hot topic of the response to instruction model as an alternative to the IQ-achievement discrepancy model of diagnosing learning disabilities and boldly raises the question of the contributions of the research of response to instruction (RTI standard-protocol approach) to the learning disabilities field.

Since the beginning of the learning disabilities field, two primary issues—that did not shape but must be dealt with—have maintained their prominence: (1) the need to validate the hypothetical notion that learning disabilities are neurologically based and thus represent a genuine handicap and (2) the need to devise methods of effective identification, diagnosis, and intervention for individuals with learning disabilities (Torgesen, 1993). In tracing the history of the learning disabilities field, we follow the lead of Hallahan and Mock (2003) and divide it into several distinguishable periods that reflect diverse sources of influence on the development of the field.

THE INFLUENCE OF EUROPE (1800–1920)

During this period, European doctors and researchers began to investigate the relationship between brain injury and speech disorders. We focus only on the legacies of those who had an impact on the learning disabilities field.

In the first decade of the nineteenth century, Franz Joseph Gall, a physician, made the assertion that separate areas of the brain controlled specific functions—in other words, that brain functions are localized. He based his assertion on the observations of his patients who had brain injury. Gall’s notion of localization of brain functions was confirmed by the work of Bouillaud in the 1820s. Broca furthered Bouillaud’s work through the use of autopsies and drew the conclusion that speech functions lie in the inferior frontal lobe. This area was subsequently called Broca’s area. Moreover, Broca’s name is linked to a specific type of speech dysfunction called Broca’s aphasia: “a slow, laborious, dysfluent speech” (Hallahan & Mock, 2003).

Another disorder called “sensory aphasia” was named by Wernicke based on his case studies of ten brain-injured patients with language disorders. In this type of aphasia, patients would talk fluently, but what they said was meaningless. Wernicke believed that the area responsible for this particular speech disorder was the left temporal lobe, the area that now bears his name. Wernicke published his case studies in 1874.

The relevance of the preceding work to the learning disabilities field is that they show unequivocally that brain damage to specific areas of the brain can result in specific kinds of mental/cognitive impairment. The progress made in research in language disorders spilled over to interest in disorders related to reading (Hallahan & Mock, 2003).

In 1896, the first case study of a child with congenital word-blindness (reading disability) was published by an English physician W. Pringle Morgan. Morgan’s work inspired a Scottish ophthalmologist, Sir Cyril Hin-shelwood, to study specific reading disabilities. He reported the first systematic clinical studies of this disorder in 1917. Some of his patients were adults who had suddenly lost their reading ability, while their other mental or cognitive abilities remaining intact. Hinshelwood studied a number of such cases and attributed this loss of reading ability to damage in specific regions of the brain. His opinion paralleled those about patients who lost their speech through brain damage of, say, Broca’s area or Wernicke’s area.

Hinshelwood also examined cases of children with severe difficulties in learning to read. His descriptions of these cases were careful, detailed, and compelling (see Torgesen, 2004). He called such conditions “congenital word blindness” and believed it resulted from damage to a particular area in the brain in which visual memories for words and individual letters were stored. His speculation that damage to that region was the cause of congenital word blindness turned out to be wrong. But his contributions to the learning disabilities field are still relevant because he pointed out that these children’s inability to learn to read juxtaposed with normal abilities in other intellectual skills, such as arithmetic. Moreover, Hinshelwood thought the occurrence of cases of word blindness to be very rare, with an incidence rate of less than one in a thousand.

In summary, the twentieth century witnessed clinical research that showed connections between types of brain damage and specific loss of various speech and language functions in adults. Interest in these connections spilled over to children who had extreme difficulties in learning to read. Hinshelwood was the first to report cases of children with this congenital word blindness. Although some dispute Hinshelwood’s relationship to the development of the learning disabilities field (see Torgesen, 2004), Hinshel-wood made a very important contribution. He maintained that such children had intact cognitive functions outside of the reading domain, and it is this specificity of cognitive malfunction that is at the heart of learning disabilities!

THE INFLUENCE OF AMERICA (1920–1960)

Beginning in the late 1930s, before the field of learning disabilities was formally established, two separate but parallel strands of clinical and research interests emerged that left indelible marks on interventions or remediation of children with learning disabilities. One strand emphasized general cognitive abilities that are presumed to underlie successful performance on a wide range of tasks. This emphasis originated from the research of Goldstein and was continued by Werner and Strauss. The other strand emphasized auditory and language processes and focused more narrowly or specifically on reading. The individuals associated with it were Helmer Mykelbust and Samuel Kirk. We examine the work of these two strands of clinical research in the next few sections.

Kurt Goldstein, a physician, was the director of a hospital for soldiers who sustained head injuries from World War I. He observed these brain-injured soldiers and noticed a group of particular behaviors that included hyperactivity, indiscriminate reaction to stimuli, confusion with figure-ground perception, concrete thinking, perseveration, meticulosity, and emotional lability. At the Wayne County Training School for children with mental retardation, Werner and Strauss became interested in applying and extending Goldstein’s clinical research to children. Strauss was a neuropsy-chiatrist, and Werner was a developmental psychologist.

Strauss and Werner divided the children in their training school into two groups: those with mental retardation resulting from a brain injury (exogenous mental retardation) and those with familial mental retardation (endogenous mental retardation). They found that compared to children with endogenous mental retardation, children with exogenous mental retardation showed more indiscriminate reactions to auditory and visual stimuli. They tended to be more impulsive, erratic, and socially unacceptable. Such findings led them to conclude that the special education category of mental retardation is not a homogenous group. Their conclusion was supported by an additional finding that after four to five years of training at the Wayne County Training School, children with endogenous mental retardation gained by an average of four points in IQ, whereas children with exogenous mental retardation did not show any gains. This discovery of no gains in children with exogenous mental retardation to the given training spurred Strauss and Werner and their associates to design an educational environment that aimed to reduce their behavioral problems and promote better attention focusing. Consequently, they engineered educational environments that reduced irrelevant stimuli while enhancing relevant stimuli in learning for children with exogenous mental retardation. Their efforts culminated in the publications of two books: Psychopathology and Education of the Brain-Injured Child (Strauss & Lehtinen, 1947) and Psychopathology and Education of the Brain-Injured Child: Progress in Theory and Clinic (Vol. 2; Strauss...