This article addresses transition needs of individuals with learning disabilities in such areas as maintaining a home, becoming appropriately involved in the community (including recreation and leisure activities), and experiencing satisfactory personal and social relationships. It reviews research on adult adjustment, highlights existing…

This article notes the increasing emphasis on self-determination in the school-to-adulthood transition movement, describes four self-determination models, and outlines instructional programs to promote self-determination in students with learning disabilities. Emerging issues are identified, including redefinition of roles, importance of taking…

This article reviews the literature on life skills curricula and instruction for students with learning disabilities, focusing on intervention and follow-up/follow-along studies. Suggestions for designing research programs that address these issues are offered. A list of life skills books is appended, along with charts listing papers on theory,…

This article reviews research and program literature on four aspects of vocational education for students with learning disabilities: (1) data from follow-up and follow-along studies illustrating the relationship between vocational-technical education and adult outcomes; (2) recent program trends; (3) current practices regarding placement and…

This article presents recommendations for transition planning assessment for secondary students with learning disabilities. It proposes redirecting assessment practices to obtain present-level-of-functioning information for Individualized Education Program planning that extends beyond high school graduation. Current assessment procedures that…

This paper describes current issues and challenges faced by students with learning disabilities, staff, and faculty at Canadian colleges and universities. Programs and initiatives that have proven to be successful are described. An appendix lists resources (mostly Canadian) for further information. (DB)

This article discusses theory, related literature, methods, and techniques related to the process of reframing the learning disabilities experience of adults to achieve employment success and adjustment. It covers various stages of the reframing process and argues that successful reframing is imperative if the individual is to take control of…

Students (ages 6-10, n=144), grouped by age and reading ability, were administered tasks with a demonstrated relationship to reading. The concept of dyslexia was supported only for the older group, for whom dyslexia appeared to be either a phonological deficit or a developmental lag. (Author/DB)

This meta-analysis examined 152 studies on social skill deficits among students with learning disabilities (LD). Quantitative synthesis showed that about 75% of students with LD manifest social skill deficits that distinguish them from comparison samples. Approximately the same level of group differentiation was found across different raters…

Twenty elementary-grade boys with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and 20 nondisabled boys worked on an arithmetic task during either high stimulation (music), low stimulation (speech), and no stimulation (silence). Although nondisabled children performed similarly under all three auditory conditions, the children with ADHD did somewhat…

This study examined the performance of 96 youth hospitalized in a psychiatric hospital on a battery of language measures. Participants with both attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and language learning disabilities (LLD) performed similarly to those with only LLD but significantly more poorly than those with only ADHD or with neither…

Forty children (ages five to nine) with or without reading disabilities, matched for mental age or reading age, completed a phoneme-grapheme learning task. Reading-disabled children took more trials than controls to learn correspondence pairs. Performance on the phonological processing task of short-term memory was the best predictor of overall…

Eighteen average readers and 18 less-skilled readers (grades 8 and 9) were presented with social studies and science passages via a computer either visually (on screen), auditorily (read by digitized voice), or bimodally (on screen, highlighted while being voiced). Less-skilled readers demonstrated comprehension in the bimodal condition equivalent…

Quantitative and qualitative measures from 19 parents and 19 siblings of children with learning disabilities showed that family functioning and self-concepts of siblings were comparable to those in families of nondisabled children but parents experienced greater stress than did parents of nondisabled children. Families also experienced…

School-related stress during the transition to junior high school was evaluated in 59 students with learning disabilities and 402 nondisabled students. Although the groups differed on their responses to stress, they did not differ in their perceived stressfulness of any of the 11 stressful school events examined. (Author/DB)