The Psychological Assessment of Children with Learning Difficulties

What are the cognitive characteristics of those children who appear to experience particular difficulty in school-based learning? At the most basic level, some struggle to understand exactly what is being asked of them which may be, predominately, a language-based problem in which the complexity of the language used, the vocabulary and the syntax are beyond the child’s grasp. Alternatively, limitations of the working memory may reduce children’s capacity to hold instructions in their minds while simultaneously undertaking problem solving. A child may experience problems in applying learning to new contexts (problems of transfer), the shifting from abstract to concrete formulations may prove challenging and the child may become overwhelmed by attempts at contextualisation, particularly where novel or superfluous information is concerned. Similarly, an attempt to move from concrete examples to the more abstract formulation of general rules or principles leaves many floundering. Possibly the nature of the problem is grasped but the child is uncertain of how to begin to generate possible strategies for problem resolution. Where a number of strategies are relevant, the child may encounter difficulties in selecting the most appropriate and subsequently in testing its effectiveness. He or she may demonstrate an inflexibility of response and an unwillingness to try alternative means of problem resolution and a tendency to be impulsive or impatient may exacerbate his or her limited powers of attention and concentration. When a correct solution is found, the child may fail to appreciate the importance of precision and accuracy in demonstrating it to others and poor strategies for committing knowledge to long-term memory may result in a failure to store information effectively. There may also be a number of non-intellective factors that impact upon motivation and task persistence. Experience of repeated failure, for example, may result in limited expectations for future success with concomitant anxiety, withdrawal, avoidance and passivity. Many children do not recognise either the importance of reflecting upon their thinking and problem-solving (metacognition) or the interplay of their cognitions, their feelings and their beliefs upon their behaviour (self-regulation) (Zimmerman, 2000). A second, and closely allied, element concerns the child’s ability to profit from adult guidance and encouragement and one may wish to ask many questions.