Activity, attention, and aggression in learning disabled children

Research has documented a reliable statistical association between specific learning disabilities in children and certain difficulties in adapting to the behavioral demands of traditional elementary school classrooms. As compared to others their age, many learning disabled children are overactive, inattentive, impulsive, and distractible in such classrooms. Indirect attempts to treat the learning disabilities by changing these associated behaviors have, however, not been very successful. It is certainly possible, for example, to reduce a child's activity and increase on‐task behavior by drugs, behavior modification, or other environmental manipulations, but this seems to have little effect on learning unless academic performance is itself the focus of the treatment. Direct remediation of the academic problem, on the other hand, often has favorable effects on some of the other disturbing behaviors. Thus therapists should focus their efforts upon improving the child's academic skills, regarding hyperactivity and attention deficits as secondary problems. Another problem sometimes associated with learning disabilities is aggressive behavior. Aggression is quite predictive of future maladjustment and thus should be of major concern to the therapist in its own right.