Attention in adolescents with learning disabilities

Thirty students attending a residential school for children with learning disabilities were divided into 2 groups on the basis of scores on the Hyperactivity Subscale of the Conners Teacher Rating Scale. Groups with and without attentional problems completed a computer task and a math task. The computer task was a forced choice discrimination task that required responding to a letter presented alone or flanked by identical, irrelevant, or meaningful letters. The flanking letters were either near to or far from the target letter. In the math task, students completed the computational portion of the math section of the Canadian Test of Basic Skills. Students were videotaped during both of these tasks and then their behaviour was coded as either on-task or off-task. Results revealed that all students were off-task more often during the desk task than during the computer task. There were also distracter effects for reaction time in the computer task. Subjects responded more quickly in conditions with no distracting letters as compared to meaningful and identical distracters. They responded more slowly to targets flanked by meaningful distracters and identical distracters than to those flanked by irrelevant distracters. The only group differences found were for accuracy of response during the computer task, with the subjects with more attentional problems responding less accurately, and there was an interaction between distance of distracter and type of distracter on accuracy. The data suggested a speed / accuracy trade-off that requires further exploration.