Given the interdisciplinary influences on school psychology along with its requirement to comply with federal and state law in the United States, scientific progress in the area of cognitive assessment and specific learning disabilities (SLD) identification has experienced slow, if not stagnant, progress. Extrapolation of research from one…

Parents play a vital role in supporting children with learning disabilities, but little is known about their understanding of this diagnosis. The experiences of parents with the diagnostic process and the services their children receive post-diagnosis vary widely. Parents who participated in this study reported that they understand learning…

Within the Canadian context, the two major learning disability classification systems are arguably the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" and the Learning Disabilities Association (LDAC) of Canada's "Official Definition of Learning Disabilities." Several of the more…

Building on a recent work of Harrison, Armstrong, Harrison, Iverson and Lange which suggested that Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Fourth Edition (WAIS-IV) scores might systematically overestimate the severity of intellectual impairments if Canadian norms are used, the present study examined differences between Canadian and American derived…

Increasing numbers of students with learning disability and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnoses are applying for accommodations in postsecondary education and employment settings. However, students' documentation of these conditions is often substandard. One possible reason for this is that clinicians have failed to apply…

This study provides a qualitative examination of the original tenets of Labelling Theory (LT) within the realm of education using a relatively new medical label, developmental coordination disorder. Labelling Theory, although initially proposed in the areas of crime and deviance, has been applied to mental illness and educational labels. However,…

Despite the importance of early intervention for most disorders to minimize potential deleterious lifetime effects for the individuals concerned, there is currently no universally accepted protocol for the early screening, identification, and assessment of specific learning disabilities, and no consistent age at which initial diagnosis occurs. In…

In 1997, the government of Ontario announced the establishment of the Learning Opportunities Task Force (LOTF) to develop and administer a series of pilot projects to enhance the transition of students with specific learning disabilities into postsecondary education, and to identify what supports, services and accommodations would assist these…