Learning disabled children's communicative competence on referential communication tasks

Stimulus gender and emotional difficulty level: their effect on recognition of facial expressions of affect in children with and without LD

The ability to recognize emotions that were easily identifiable and those that were more difficult to identify, as expressed by male and female faces, was studied in 48 nondisabled children and 76 children with learning disabilities (LD) ages 9 through 12. On the basis of their performance on the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test and the Benton Visual Retention Test, the LD group was divided into three subgroups: those with verbal (VD), nonverbal (NVD), and both verbal and nonverbal (BD) deficits. A shortened version of Ekman and Friesen's Pictures of Facial Affect, including pictures of both men and women, was the measure of ability to identify facial expressions of affect. Children of both genders in all three groups of children with LD, as well as their normally achieving peers, were more accurate in identifying expressions of affect from female faces, notwithstanding differences in sensitivity to such emotional communication in favor of the nondisabled and VD groups. However, a significant interaction was found between gender and emotional recognition difficulty level, with female faces being more expressive for emotions that were difficult to recognize.

Interpretation of facial expressions of affect in children with learning disabilities with verbal or nonverbal deficits

The ability to identify facial expressions of happiness, sadness, anger, surprise,fear, and disgust was studied in 48 nondisabled children and 76 children with learning disabilities aged 9 through 12. On the basis of their performance on the Rey Auditory-Verbal Learning Test and the Benton Visual Retention Test, the LD group was divided into three subgroups: those with verbal deficits (VD), nonverbal deficits (NVD), and both verbal and nonverbal (BD) deficits. The measure of ability to interpret facial expressions of affect was a shortened version of Ekman and Friesen's Pictures of Facial Affect. Overall, the nondisabled group had better interpretive ability than the three learning disabled groups and the VD group had better ability than the NVD and BD groups. Although the identification level of the nondisabled group differed from that of the VD group only for surprise, it was superior to that of the NVD and BD groups for four of the six emotions. Happiness was the easiest to identify, and the remaining emotions in ascending order of difficulty were anger, surprise, sadness, fear, and disgust. Older subjects did better than younger ones only for fear and disgust, and boys and girls did not differ in interpretive ability. These findings are discussed in terms of the need to take note of the heterogeneity of the learning disabled population and the particular vulnerability to social imperception of children with nonverbal deficits.

Comprehension of nonverbal communication: a reexamination of the social competencies of learning-disabled children

This study was designed to determine whether learning-disabled (LD) children differed from nondisabled (NLD) children in their ability to comprehend nonverbal communication when potential attentional differences between the groups were controlled. In addition, the relationship between nonverbal comprehension and social competence was assessed. Thirty LD and 30 NLD boys between 9 and 12 years of age were administered a short form of the Profile of Nonverbal Sensitivity (PONS) to assess nonverbal comprehension; social competence measures included teachers' ratings of aggressive and withdrawn behaviors using the Behavior Problem Checklist, and "blind" judges' ratings of performance on a role-play of friendship-making skills. Under attention-incentive conditions, no performance differences between LD and NLD children were found on the PONS; however, LD children were judged to be more withdrawn and less socially skilled. While PONS scores were not related to other social competence measures, they were associated with academic achievement and IQ. Results emphasize the importance of considering the presence of attentional problems in LD children that may interfere with an accurate assessment of their skills.