Economic difficulties and psychosocial adversity as excluding factors for learning disability – do the poor slip again between the cracks?

 

 

A child can be diagnosed as learning disabled when none of the following factors is the main reason for his reading/writing/math difficulties: sensory impairment, intellectual disability,  emotional or psychological disturbances, other neurological disorders, lack of motivation, fatigue, poor or ineffective instruction, cultural differences, linguistic differences (i.e., limited English proficiency), economic disadvantage or psychosocial adversity.

 

Thus, if we are under the impression that the child's difficulties in reading,  writing or arithmetic are mainly due to economic disadvantage or psychosocial adversity, we cannot diagnose him as learning disabled. 

Still we'd like to give this child support in school, but we don't want to assign him the learning disability label if this is not the main reason for his difficulties.

How can an economic disadvantage be the main cause of reading, writing or arithmetic difficulties?

One way is through the influence of comprehension knowledge on reading, writing and arithmetic.  A child with limited vocabulary and general information will have a hard time comprehending what he reads (since he may not know key words in the text and may not be familiar with the subject the text deals with).  This child may also have trouble expressing himself  richly and with complexity in written language.  The breadth of comprehension knowledge also influences arithmetic.  A child with poor comprehension knowledge may have difficulties understanding word problems and may have poor "arithmetic vocabulary" (words like "denominator, power etc.).

 

When researchers looked at the effect of daily interactions between parents and children on language and vocabulary development, they found that up to the age of three, children from high SES (socioeconomic status) families were exposed to 30 million more words than children from very low SES families!  This gap was widened with age!

I assume that due to differences in exposure, there may be differences between children from high SES and low SES families in understanding and using syntactical and grammatical structures typical of high register English.

Children from low SES families have lesser chances to visit museums or go on trips. They may have less books at home and have less extracurricular activities.  This lack of experience may affect their comprehension knowledge. 

Obviously these are generalizations that are not true for every child from low SES background.  Clearly some children raised in low SES backgrounds have books at home and are avid readers.  Some children raised in low SES backgrounds have enriching conversations with their parents.  We should consider the situation of the specific child we work with and not judge him by the group he belongs to.  But generally, this tendency does exist.

Can low SES adversely affect other cognitive abilities, beside comprehension knowledge?

Items in intelligence tests are derived from the wealth of knowledge and skills of the test's developers, who are usually people from average or higher SES background, well acculturated to the dominant culture in which they live.  

One evidence of the links between SES and general intelligence can be found in the WISC-R Hebrew manual (translated by me): "the degree of nurturance given to the child in the environment he is raised in is…another possible factor influencing his raw scores…There is no doubt that in this respect there are marked differences among scores of children of the same age and the same school experience – differences in learning opportunities and extracurricular activities, differences in the degree of support and encouragement these children receive and so on.  Psychologists agree about the unique effect of environmental nurturance on the development of children.  Hence, among children of the same age and the same school experience, the average raw score in a test will rise as the level of environmental nurturance rises… This is the reason that the estimate of the real intellectual potential of the child is biased:  the intellectual potential of children raised in a nurturing environment is overestimated, and the real potential of children raised in a deprived environment is underestimated…In order to correct for this bias…one has to use separate norms for different levels of nurturance…[But it's difficult] to separate the unique effect of nurturance on raw test scores.  

We decided…to assume the differences in nurturance cause about half of the differences among raw scores of children at the same age having the same amount of school experience…We recommend using a "rule of thumb" for a crude correction of the IQ scores derived from the norm tables, when they are especially biased, that is, when it's clear that the child was raised in an extreme environment in respect of nurturance.  For children raised in an especially deprived environment, we recommend adding 7 points to the measured FSIQ (full scale IQ), and from the scores of children raised in an especially nurturing environment we recommend subtracting 7 points."

I hope to present in future posts more evidence and possible effects of SES on specific cognitive abilities.

 What is the significance of this for diagnosing children raised in "an especially deprived environment" as learning disabled?

We don't want to diagnose a child whose main cause for low achievement is environmental conditions related to his SES as learning disabled.  On the other hand, it seems that an especially deprived environment affects FSIQ.  As a result, a child from low SES may have a few low cognitive abilities.  These abilities have probably been adversely affected by SES and not by disability.  We don't want to diagnose this child as a "slow learner" either.     We still want very much to provide him with assistance in school.

I don't know about other countries, but in Israel a child has to have a disability of some sort in order to get assistance in a regular school.  That's how poor children slip between the cracks.

References (some are in Hebrew):

1. Colker, Ruth.  The learning disability mess.  Journal of gender, social policy and the law, 2011,  20(81-106)   

 .2  חוזר מנכ"ל משרד החינוך תשס"ד.http://cms.education.gov.il/educationcms/applications/mankal/arc/sd4bk4_3_25.htm

3.    Flanagan, D. P., Ortiz, S. O., Alfonso, V. C., & Dynda, A. M. (2006). Integration of response to intervention and norm‐referenced tests in learning disability identification: Learning from the Tower of Babel. Psychology in the Schools, 43(7), 807-825.‏

  

4. American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Publishing

5.  Hart, B., & Risley, T. R. (2003). The early catastrophe: The 30 million word gap  by age 3. American educator, 27(1), 4-9.‏

6.  McGrew, K. S., & Wendling, B. J. (2010). Cattell–Horn–Carroll cognitive‐achievement relations: What we have learned from the past 20 years of research. Psychology in the Schools, 47(7), 651-675.‏  http://www.iapsych.com/kmpubs/mcgrew2010.pdf 

7.  קאהן, ס.  מדריך למבחן האינטליגנציה WISCR95.  משרד החינוך, התרבות והספורט – השירות הפסיכולוגי – ייעוצי.  מכון הנרייטה סאלד למחקר במדעי ההתנהגות. 1998.