16. LEARNING DISABILITIES James Hinshelwood (1904), a Glasgow ophthalmologist, studied and wrote about congenital word-blindness, and is today cited as the first major figure in what is called the field of learning disabilities. He analyzed the presenting symptoms in detail in order to place its diagnosis on a "scientific basis" and to show how to teach children with this condition. What Hinshelwood discovered was that the root of congenital word-blindness lay in childrens' brains, because he had observed that dysfunctional reading symptoms found in adults with brain lesions were analogous to those of certain children with reading problems (p.133). Farnham-Diggory (1978) replaced "congenital word-blindness" with other terms thought to define reading disabilities more accurately, and research in the past two decades has developed more and more elaborate theories using an array of psychometric tests, complex experimental methods, and modern technology to study the brain directly. The small number of cases of congenital word-blindness identified by Hinshelwood and others at the turn of the century pales in comparison to the number of children now identified as having learning and reading disabilities due to neurological deficits. In U.S. schools today, an estimated total of 1.8 million children are categorized as learning disabled, approximately 42 percent of the 4.3 million children formally identified as educationally handicapped. The learning disabled category contains a considerably larger number of children than the 750,000 classified as mentally retarded or the approximately 362,000 classified as emotionally disturbed. The number of children categorized as learning disabled continues to grow rapidly. The figure in 1985 was more than twice the approximately 800,000 children who were in this category in the 1976-77 school year. This leap of 127 percent was much greater than the relatively modest 27.9 percent increase for the emotionally disturbed or the 22.6 percent decrease in children classified as mentally retarded during the same ten-year period (Tarnpol, 1976). What exactly is the disability? Since Hinshelwood's initial work, the term "congenital word-blindness," has generated a host of names, including strephosymbolia, word amblyopia, bradylexia, script-blindness, primary reading retardation, specific reading disability, developmental reading backwardness, analfabetia partialis, amnesia visualis, genetic dyslexia, reading disability, dyslexia, and learning disability. (Kavale, 1985). Most of these have now been discarded in favor of the last three, with "learning disabilities" (LD), as an overall term for the language, math, spelling, and reading disabilities; and "dyslexia" or "reading disability" as synonymous terms for learning-disabled children who specifically have trouble reading. While learning disabilities encompass several areas of difficulty, both in practice and research children placed in this category primarily have a reading problem (p. 23). An important formal expression of the meaning of "learning disabilities" was developed in 1968 as part of congressional work to prepare learning-disabilities legislation. The National Advisory Committee on Handicapped Children (1968), a multidisciplinary group, was asked to define LD, and with only a few insignificant changes, their definition was used as the standard in the field and federal legislation on the problem for the next decade: Children with special learning disabilities exhibit a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or using the spoken or written language. These may be manifested in disorders of listening, thinking, talking, reading, writing, spelling, or arithmetic. They include conditions which have been referred to as perceptual handicaps, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia, developmental aphasia, etc. They do not include learning problems which are due primarily to visual, hearing, or motor handicaps, to mental retardation, emotional disturbance, or to environmental disadvantage. This definition remained preeminent until 1981 when the National Joint Committee for Learning Disabilities (1981) met and issued the following definition: Learning disabilities is a generic term that refers to a heterogeneous group of disorders manifested by significant difficulties in the acquisition and use of listening, speaking, reading, writing, reasoning or mathematical abilities. These disorders are intrinsic to the individual and presumed to be due to central nervous system dysfunction. Even though a learning disability may occur concomitantly with other handicapping conditions (e.g., sensory impairment, mental retardation, social and emotional disturbance) or environmental influences (e.g., cultural differences, insufficient/inappropriate instruction, psychogenic factors), it is not the direct result of those conditions or influences. Reversals are only the most well-publicized of numerous perceptual deficits that have long figured prominently in LD explanations. Deficit-oriented theories propose that these reading problems are actually caused by perceptual deficits which are themselves caused by neurological dysfunctions. The learning disabled are not said to have sensory problems-they can see and hear satisfactorily-but something else prevents them from processing linguistic and some nonlinguistic material as normal children do. They may be unable to distinguish between forms of similar words, to associate words or parts of words with their sounds, or to link either in the eye or in the ear a sequence of word parts to construct a word (Jacoby, 1975). Attention deficit has become the "official" medical category for diagnosing LD. The American Psychiatric Association's 1980 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders is the manual from which "mental disorders" are diagnosed (1980). It designates "attention deficit disorder" as an official category for classifying children (Forness and Cantwell, 1982). The term replaces previously popular ones that had been criticized for being nebulous and undiagnosable. Attention deficit disorder, said to be the most common symptom of the nebulous and undiagnosable terms, was selected both as chief symptom an as a name for the category, because it was though to be a behavioral and more objective description of the elusive condition. In the words of the manual: In the past a variety of names have been attached to this disorder, including...Hyperactive Child Syndrome, Minimal Brain Damage, Minimal Brain Dysfunction, Minimal Cerebral Dysfunction, and Minor Cerebral Dysfunction. In this manual, Attention Deficit is the name given to this disorder, since attentional difficulties are prominent and virtually always present among children with these diagnoses. (APA, p. 41). Regarding language, learning-disabled children do poorly on language tests and appear to have various language difficulties. They use fewer words in sentences; use fewer complex sentences, less sophisticated syntax, provide less information in sentences, are slower in identifying words, and make more grammatical errors (Feagans and Short, 1984). These difficulties with linguistic expression are the kinds of "surface manifestations" that suggest that language deficits are the sole cause of dyslexia--a "single- deficit" explanation (Firth, 1981). The deficits are considered to be severe, making it unlikely that dyslexic will "ever catch up with "normal readers" (Olson, 1986). In recent years, phonological and phonetic deficits have been considered by many LD language authorities to be the language deficits that most clearly distinguish disabled from normal readers (p. 5). Overall, most LD language specialists have completed more research on these two areas than any other language deficit (Vellutino, 1983). For over a century phonics has been considered essential for reading development, even though the argument has swung back and forth over whether reading should be taught by sight-word recognition or by phonics (Chall, 1967). In light of this historic pendulum, the LD field's alignment on phonemic deficits is reminiscent of Yogi Berra's remark after learning he had been fired as manager of the New York Yankees, and that Billy Martin was returning to manage the team for the fourth time. Said Yogi, "It was like deja vu all over again." From Hinshelwood on, LD has been considered to be a hereditary condition. It has been defined as an "intrinsic neurological dysfunction." McDonald Critchley, former president of the World Federation of Neurology, dyslexia is entirely inherited. He explained, "Dyslexia is a genetically determined constitutional disorder. This is extremely important, because it means that...dyslexia arises independently of environmental factors" (Critchley, 1968). A somewhat more cautious estimate, but considerable anyway, came from Alexander Bannatyne, an LD expert whose diagnostic and remedial approaches have been widely published and researched. He proposed that a specific type of genetically derived dyslexia probably exists in "the majority of the learning disabled population as a whole" (Bannatyne, 1978). There is a sensible component to genetic explanations, particularly if one accepts the principle of neurological dysfunction. If LD does not come from "circumstances" but from an individual's biology, and if it also runs in families, why not expect that the problem originates in the genes? (McCready, 1926). The most comprehensive presentation of a sex-differences explanation of dyslexia is in Diane McGuinness's (1985) book, When Children Don't Learn. In explaining the cause of dyslexia, McGuinness emphasized the neurological differences between the sexes, differences that are the basis of two kinds of learning disabilities; one is in reading, which boys suffer from, the other in mathematics, which afflicts girls. According to McGuinness, girls seldom become dyslexic because their superior verbal ability enables them to benefit from reading instruction. Unfortunately for boys, their relatively inferior verbal ability often prevents them from reading. Conversely, boys have superior cognitive skills necessary for mathematics and the physical sciences; girls often lack them, as is unmistakable in their serious "inability to visualize spatial relations" (p. 21). These differences explain why girls do worse in mathematics and are "under-represented in those branches of the physical sciences that rely heavily on higher mathematics, such as physics and engineering" (p. 17). Coles (1987) "interactivity theory of LD" combined the concepts of interaction and activity. Interaction emphasizes processes, relationships, and transformations, but insufficiently denotes activity. Activity emphasizes events and active persons, including the makeup of persons (such as neurology, language and reading abilities, motivation), but insufficiently denotes interaction. Interactivity, in combining the concepts, denotes the numerous and complex activities and interactions that comprise the creation, sustenance, remediation, and prevention of learning disabilities. The concept of interactivity is not an environmental or behavioral interpretation of LD. Those influences that interact with a person are not external ones that simply etch their mark on the mind. Nor is there a similar etching on groups or members of social institutions involved in the interactivity. Interactivity "is also different from many cognitive approaches. At all times, the interactivity involves active persons who are affected and changed by and in turn affect and change circumstances" (p. 140). The interactivity theory, Coles stated, should not be interpreted as a potpourri of random elements. Although interactivity has many combinations, a basic assumption of the theory is "that broad social, economic, political, and cultural influences, which are not always immediately apparent, are fundamental to the creation or prevention of LD. This does not mean that these broad influences by themselves determine LD; it does mean that they are inseparable from all activities and interactions that are a part of LD" (p. 141). Coles (1987) wrote that children do not merely accept a label ascribed by others and then acquire the self-concept of being powerless and act accordingly. Rather, in the activity of failing, of being unable to accomplish academic tasks, and in having their activity defined as one exuding intellectual powerlessness, the child becomes powerless. The child does not only begin to act and appear powerlessness, but actually is powerless, particularly when instruction seems persistently insurmountable (Licht et al, 1984). Being intellectually powerless means that the individual's actions will display learning-disabled behavior that will lead important overseers, such as teachers and parents, to respond to the child in ways that increase the learning disability. Being and feeling intellectually powerless may take various other forms. Research by Torgenson et al. (1978-1979) suggested that though learning-disabled children have the cognitive ability to complete academic tasks successfully, their passivity keeps them from spontaneously and efficiently employing learning strategies to accomplish them. Provided they receive the proper educational remediation, learning disabled children have been able to exercise these dormant abilities (Torgesen and Goldman, 1977). The complexity of unraveling compounded problems in the LD child is evident in the work of researchers who found that failure to use learning strategies does not always differentiate learning-disabled and normal children (Griswold et al, 1985). LD children may learn strategies and still not be able to apply them any better after educational remediation. Peer relationships in the instructional situation may also involve the child in creating LD. The significance of reading aloud in a classroom might be used to exercise literacy development. However, a child's personal sense of the task may be that he or she will be humiliated before classmates. The child may respond by attending more to his or her classmates than to the text, or by hurrying through the text, regardless of mistakes made, to end the excruciating task as quickly as possible. The child may refuse to read aloud for fear of making mistakes, may be disruptive, or may find other ways that reflect a desire to avoid the task (Rudel and Helfgott, 1984). The LD process becomes increasingly intricate and harder to disentangle. Students may participate in the process by developing qualities and reactions that add to the disability. In many children, lower self-esteem and poor motivation, distractibility, and emotional distress are among the qualities that develop concomitant with a learning disability. Overall, being intellectually powerlessness makes the cause of LD appear to be within the child. One paper which admonished, "LD or not LD: That's not the Question!" counseled the field not to "ponder, argue, quibble, and mix about exactly what to call" students who are failing in school, because this "has merely served to sidetrack interest from the bigger, more important question--what do we do with them" (Ysseldyke, 1983). If educators were instead to ask this pragmatic question, they could then pursue answers to such related useful questions as, "What system of service delivery for students failing in school makes sense?" with developing remedial systems, measures could be undertaken to prevent underachievement within the schools. The pragmatic approach puts questions about the nature of the children's educational problems and the best methods for solving them far ahead of questions about causation. This approach maintains that information about the cause of a child's academic deficiencies are of little if any help to an educator faced with the task of remediating the deficiencies (p. 31). Coles (1987) concluded "this revisionist perspective bids the field of LD not to disband or choose an exclusively pragmatic course, but use a two pronged approach." Ld must develop into a critical field, to examine and contest the social organization, power, practices, and ideology that shape the conditions for educational failure. A critical LD field must identify the complex interactivity in which LD is created. The interactivity theory of LD proposes that while various features of an individual (including neurology), groups, and institutions, and social, economic, and cultural influence, and interdependencies, all combine to create the processes and produces of LD. One might think of interactivity as a "polyphony," a musical term for melodic parts that are both independent and interdependent. The musical lines have an "individual design, each of which retains its identity as a line to some degree," but the music comes from the simultaneous combination of the lines (p. 209.). From all the research done since Hinshelwood's first hypotheses were accepted, tested, discounted, and new theories posited, LD continues to evade simple definitions. Continued research is needed to narrow the gap between cause and effect, and even Coles' interactivity theory does not significantly contribute to narrowing a definition for this disability