Learning Disabled Children's Comprehension of Nonverbal Communication

A problem shared by many learning disabled youngsters which confounds their academic difficulties is adequate social adjustment. Frequently, inadequate social adjustment among the learning disabled is conceived of as derived from their academic failure, mediated by lowered self-confidence. Various psychodynamic and social-psychological explanations for this phenomenon are widely known. In this article, Bryan poses an alternative, that the learning disabled child may be less sensitive to social cues and, hence, may be more apt to misinterpret them, the result being inappropriate, maladaptive social behavior. While confirmation of this hypothesis in no way disproves the fact that some children may show inappropriate social behavior for other reasons, the demonstration that some learning disabled children do have less accurate social perceptions has distinctive remedial implications which Bryan discusses. — G.M.S.