Research on Interventions for Adolescents with Learning Disabilities: A Meta-Analysis of Outcomes Related to Higher-Order Processing

The present article provides a meta-analysis of intervention research related to higher-order processing (i.e., problem solving) for adolescents with learning disabilities. The mean effect size (ES) for the 58 intervention studies in this synthesis was .82. 4 important findings emerged from the synthesis: (1) large ESs emerged on measures of metacognition and text understanding; (2) interventions that included instructional components that loaded on factors related to advanced organizers, new content/skills, and extended practice contributed significant variance (approximately 17%) to the magnitude of ES; (3) the magnitude of ESs was significantly higher for studies with samples meeting cutoff criteria (IQ > 85 and reading < 25th percentile) than non-cutoff score criteria; and (4) the magnitude of ES for these cutoff score studies was significantly lower for studies with discrepancies between IQ and reading than those without discrepancies. Implications related to instructional components that optimize the magnitude of outcomes are discussed.