Although research has documented overlapping and coexisting characteristics of learning disabilities and emotional/behavioral disorders, little attention has been paid to the subset of students who manifest symptoms of both disorders (LD/EBD). This gap in our professional knowledge/research base may be due to (a) exclusive language in federal definitions that promotes differentiation of disabilities rather than recognition of symptom overlap; (b) the lack of a conceptual model of concomitant learning and emotional/behavioral disorders; and (c) the absence of a research focus on this population. In this article, we construct a conceptual model involving six critical domains of relevance to students with LD/EBD. After describing the utility of this interactive and functional model, we highlight critical issues in screening, assessment, and programming for children with concomitant LD/EBD.
The presence of concomitant learning disabilities/learning problems in students with behavioral disorders/emotional disturbance was examined in the present study. The 124 subjects, admitted to the Inpatient Child Psychiatry Unit of The Johns Hopkins Hospital for behavioral/emotional problems, ranged in age from 5 years, 1 month to 15 years, 5 months. Individual evaluations of each subject were conducted in which tests of aptitude and academic achievement were administered. Of the 124 students, 38% were identified as having learning disabilities and an additional 17.8% as having learning problems. The majority of the identified students with learning disabilities had deficiencies in all content areas assessed; subjects with learning problems had deficiencies in all reading and/or language areas. The distribution of learning disabilities/learning problems as a function of age suggests that the incidence of learning disabilities among students with behavioral disorders/emotional disturbance decreases as age increases, but that incidence of learning problems remains stable regardless of age groupings. Differences were also found in the categorical referents applied to subjects prior to and subsequent to their hospitalizations. Implications of these results are discussed in regard to (a) categorical versus cross-categorical classification, (b) the validity of categorical referents used by school and hospital settings, and (c) issues related to the design of educational interventions for students with learning and behavior problems.
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