A comparison of the socio-psycho-educational and personality characteristics of learning disabled and dyslexic children with normal controls

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: LD-dyslexic children experience more social isolation, social exclusion, loneliness less access to social goods -i. e. in education, employment, welfare, etc. (Bryan & Bryan, 1990). Students with learning disorders view themselves as more lonely and report lower levels of the sense of coherence than the average achieving pupils. (Wiener, 1998). Their reading and other learning problems are likely to continue into adulthood, with destructive effects on their feelings of self worth, personal relationships and job opportunities. Last but not least, learning disabilities have been associated with juvenile delinquency. A variety of theories concerning this purported causal relationship have been proposed. Although the assumption that learning disability plays a primary role in a delinquent outcome, remains open to question. AIM: This study examined whether: 1) There is a significant correlation between the socio-psycho-educational- environmental problems and learning disabilities. 2) They can be differentiated from their normal controls on the basis of their psycho-socio-educational profile. MATERIAL: The parents of normal controls participating in the study were individually given a questionnaire to complete about their children's reactions and social behaviour. The dyslexic children's parents had already filled in an extended questionnaire that was especially developed by Professor G. Pavlidis for students with Learning Difficulties and Dyslexia. Subiects: Two hundred and twenty seven (227 - 122 boys and 104 girls) children and their parents, took part in this research. The children attended grades 3 through 6. The sample consisted of a hundred and thirty six (136) normal controls -57 boys and 78 girls, and ninety one (91) dyslexics and learning disabled children -65 boys and 26 girls-drawn from the Dyslexia and I. Q. Center, where they were diagnosed by Prof. Pavlidis. The controls were indentified according to their parents answers who had filled in the Pavlidis Questionnaire that was mentioned above. (LD children had similar characteristics as the dyslexics, however they did not fulfil all the criteria to be classified as dyslexics. For instance, for a child to be diagnosed as dyslexic it is necessary to fall significantly behind in reading. Our LD child had similar problems with dyslexic and ADHD in their written expression etc but their reading was not as bad). The subjects' selection as well as their testing took place according to standard ethics and after the necessary permissions were received and the appropriate informed consents were filled out. Results: The LD-dyslexic children's psycho-socio-educational characteristics were found to be significantly different worse than those of the normal controls of the same age. In fact, the two groups different so much that on the basis of their psycho-socio-educational profile the Discriminant Analysis (DA) successfully classified the two groups with accuracy of 94,6%. The LD-dyslexic group was correctly identified with 97,6% while the normal controls were classified with 93,7% accuracy. Conclusions: The very high discrimination accuracy between the two groups raises the possibility to use the Pavlidis Questionnaire as a quick, easy to administer, inexpensive and highly accurate screening tool for children with suspected LD-dyslexia. This potential will be of particular importance to countries like Greece, where only few and very limited possibilities exist within the educational system for the diagnosis of the LD-dyslexic children. However, one has to be cautions to the strong possibility not to be able to discriminate between specific LD-dyslexics and children with general learning retardation, whichQ may have very different etiology, e.g. due to low IQ.