Visual Displays To Increase Comprehension of High School Learning-Disabled Students

The purpose of this study was to examine the relative effectiveness of visual spatial displays to enhance comprehension of important information during instruction with adolescent learning-disabled students. Subjects were randomly assigned to one of two treatment groups. One group was taught by presenting key concepts with a visual spatial display of this information. The other group was taught the same information except that content was presented by texts. Both treatment groups studied in a group task structure. Six experimenter-made tests were developed for this study. Five tests directly measured student mastery of the content taught, whereas the other test was a transfer measure. Results favored the group taught with a visual spatial display on the short-term recall tests, but no differences were found on the transfer or maintenance tests. The discussion focuses on how teachers can improve comprehension instruction for the less skilled student.