The Effect of language on abstracting skills in learning disabled children

Abstract

The purpose of this paper was to study the effect of language on abstracting skills in children. Abstraction was defined operationally by a group of discriminating learning tasks. Two forms of the test, picture and words, were administered to 30 learning disabled children, who were diagnosed as either neurocognitively impaired or neurocognitively intact. The intact children performed differentially on the two forms of the test, scoring better on the verbal form, while the impaired showed no difference. The authors concluded that words facilitated performance in the intact but not in the impaired group. Deficiency in the production of language in children at large was offered as an explanation for poorer performance on the picture test relative to the verbal test in the intact group, whereas deficiency in verbal mediation was given as the explanation for failure to improve on the verbal test in the impaired group.