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VIGILANCE DEFICIT IN LEARNING DISABLED CHILDREN: A SIGNAL DETECTION ANALYSIS
Author(s) -
Swanson Lee
Publication year - 1981
Publication title -
journal of child psychology and psychiatry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.652
H-Index - 211
eISSN - 1469-7610
pISSN - 0021-9630
DOI - 10.1111/j.1469-7610.1981.tb00563.x
Subject(s) - vigilance (psychology) , psychology , learning disabled , audiology , modalities , learning disability , developmental psychology , cognitive psychology , medicine , social science , sociology
SUMMARY To test the proposition that learning disabled children manifest a sustained deficit within a detection theory analysis, the Continuous Performance Test (cf, Sykes, Douglas and Morgenstern, 1973) was administered lo normal and learning disabled boys. Children were tested on two task lengths (4:45 and 9:50 minutes) and two modalities (auditory and visual) in which dependent measures were correct detections and false responses, d' and B values As expected, learning disabled children made significantly fewer correct detections and ware false responses and were less sensitive (d') to critical stimuli than normal children There was no strong evidence to indicate disabled and Normal children differ on response criterion (B). B decreased significantly with time on cask for both groups, whereas d' remained relatively unchanged. Results were interpreted as supporting the notion that learning disabled children suffer a reduction in processing capacity rather than a loss of sustained attention over time.