Hammill Institute on Disabilities

Activating the Inactive Learner: Use of Questions/Prompts to Enhance Comprehension and

Retention of Implied Information in Learning Disabled Children
Author(s): Bernice Y. L. Wong
Source: Learning Disability Quarterly, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Winter, 1980), pp. 29-37
Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1510423 .
Accessed: 14/06/2014 07:49
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Sage Publications, Inc. and Hammill Institute on Disabilities are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,
preserve and extend access to Learning Disability Quarterly.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 62.122.76.45 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 07:49:30 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

ACTIVATINGTHE INACTIVELEARNER:
USE OF QUESTIONS/PROMPTS
TO ENHANCE COMPREHENSION AND
RETENTIONOF IMPLIEDINFORMATION
IN LEARNING DISABLED CHILDREN
Bernice Y. L. Wong

Abstract. This article reports the findings of two studies involving comprehension and retention of implied Information in learning disabled and normally
achieving second and sixth graders. In the first study, evidence was obtained of
inadequate processing of implied information in learning disabled children in both
grades. In the second study, a simple questions/prompts
procedure brought about
of
improved/adequate
processing
implied information in new, comparable groups
of learning disabled second and sixth graders. The results were interpreted to
of the learning disabled child as an inactive
support Torgesen's conceptualization
learner. Lastly, educational implications of the results were discussed.

A number of studies of learning disabled

children's memory functions have suggested
that memory problems may play a significant
role in their reading problems (Morrison,
Giordani, & Nagy, 1977; Torgesen, 1977a;
Waller, 1976; Wong, Wong, & Foth, 1977;
Wong, 1978). The focus on memory problems, however, does not reflectadvocacy of a
single-factor theory of learning disabilities,
suggesting that memory deficits alone cause
the development of learning disabilities.
Rather, it is implicitly assumed that learning
disabled children's memory problems interact
with other possible cognitive problems, e.g.,
language problems (cf. Vellutino, 1978),
and/or interact with insufficiently individualized instructionalprograms to produce learning problems (Adelman, 1971). Moreover,
the obtained information concerns only the
particular subgroup of learning disabled
children with memory problems. Such information would not help other subgroups
of learning disabled children with different
cognitive deficits, e.g., conceptual difficulties.

Torgesen (1977b) appears to have provided a satisfactory conceptual framework

for research on learning disabled children's
memory functions. According to Torgesen's
conceptualization, the learning disabled child
is seen as an inactive learner who does not
participate actively in his/her own learning.
The inactive learner lacks a general awareness of his/her own cognitive processes
and of the demands of a given task, and
lacks goal-directed motivation. Torgesen
thinks that the learning disabled child's general lack of cognitive awareness and lack of
motivation result in an inability to adopt
task-appropriate strategies. The use of appropriate strategies include rehearsing, labeling, visual imagery, and sentence elaboration
(Craik & Lockhart, 1972; Craik & Tulving,
1975; Meachem, 1972). Torgesen (1977b)
BERNICE Y. L. WONG, Ed.D., is Assistant
Professor, Education Faculty, Simon Fraser
University, B.C., Canada.
Volume 3, Winter1980

This content downloaded from 62.122.76.45 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 07:49:30 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

29

suggests that in certain tasks, especially in

memory tasks, learning disabled children's
failure may be caused by their lack of
appropriate strategies. He does not deny that
the majorityof learning disabled children may
have attentional and/or memory problems.
However, he emphasizes that a complete
analysis of a learning disabled child's failure at
any task should include considerationof the absence of appropriate strategies as well as cognitive deficits. Thus, within the context of Torgesen's (1977b) conception of the learning
disabled child, the use of task-appropriate
strategies assumes prominence. One strategy
that appears important for children's comprehension and memory is the ability to derive
inferences (Paris & Lindauer, 1976; Paris,
Lindauer, & Cox, 1978). Truncated passive
sentences, semantic entailment, and transitivity are understood by incorporating the
appropriate inferences into semantically integrated memory representatives of those relationships. However, children also derive
and retain inferredrelationshipsfrom prose. It
has been shown that children often infer presuppositions, consequences, means-ends relations, and affective states of charactersin brief
stories read to them (Paris, 1975; Stein &
Glenn, 1975). Moreover, the abilityto understand and remember inferences in prose
appears to improve with age for children
from 6 to 12 years old, and may reflect
more than age-related increase in memory
capacity. Paris (1975) showed that there was
a high correlation between a child's ability
to understand implied relationships within a
story and the long-term retention of the main
ideas of the story. Thus, comprehension
of implied relationships may be an important
strategyfor rememberingsemantic information.
The purpose of the present study was to
investigate the comprehension of implied information in learning disabled children. Based
on Torgesen's (1977a) conception of learning disabled children as inactive learners, we
predictedthat learningdisabled childrenwould
not use this strategy (comprehension of
implied information) to encode given verbal
stimuli as efficiently as children without learning problems. Specifically, given sentences
with implied consequences (e.g., "Mybrother
fell down on the playground" with the
30

implied consequence being "and skinned his

knee"), the learning disabled child would
not spontaneously generate the implicit consequences during encoding of the sentences.
Consequently, in the subsequent recall of
sentences with implied consequences, his/her
recall would not be facilitated by the given
retrieval cues (i.e., "playground - and
skinned his knee"). Hence, we would predict that learning disabled children would
demonstrate poor recall of sentences with
implied consequences.
EXPERIMENT I
Method
Subjects. A total of 128 children participated in the study. Half of them were second
graders and the remaining half were sixth
graders. Within each grade level, the children were evenly divided into two groups,
one group consisting of learning disabled
children, the other consisting of good readers.
The criteria for classifying a child as
learning disabled were as follows: (1) S/he
demonstrated an academic reading deficit
of one year or more below grade level;
(2) S/he had adequate intelligence as measured on the Performance Scale of the
Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children
(WISC-R, 1976); (3) S/he had no physical,
sensory or emotional disorders. The learning disabled subjects had all previously been
identified by school district personnel and
were attending daily remedial classes for
about an hour in LearningAssistance Centres.
The learning disabled children were randomly recruited from two large elementary
schools in a suburban school district in
Vancouver, B.C., Canada. The two schools
were located in the same lower middle-class
socioeconomic area. The good readers were
randomly selected from the same classrooms
as the learning disabled children. Within each
group of children, the ratio of boys and
girlswas approximately equal.
The mean Performance I.Q. of the grade
two learning disabled children was 98.9
(S.D. = 11.96). The mean Performance
I.Q. of the grade two good readers was
101.15 (S.D. = 9.63). The mean reading
level of the grade two learning disabled
children was 1.0 grade below grade level
(S.D. = .13) on the Gates McGinitieReading

Learning DisabilityQuarterly

This content downloaded from 62.122.76.45 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 07:49:30 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Tests. The mean reading level of the grade

two good readers was 1.54 grades above
grade level (S.D. = .30).
The mean Performance I.Q. of the grade
six learning disabled children and good
readers was 100.75 (S.D. = 13.61) and
103.90 (S.D. = 7.24), respectively. The
mean reading levels were: 1.83 grades below
grade level for the grade six learning disabled children (S.D. = .39) and 1.28 grades
above grade level for the grade six good
readers (S.D. = .66).
The school districts of Vancouver, British
Columbia, now have a strictpolicy on administering intelligence tests to students. Because
of negative sentiment to the possibility of
stigmatization of normally achieving students
resulting from classifying them according to
intelligence, school board officials are extremely reluctant to grant permission to administer intelligence tests. They are also
under pressure from school trustees who are
generally rather vehement against intelligence
testing. Moreover, school board officials are
concerned with reactions from parents even
though their consent for such testing is mandatory. The present author managed to persuade the school districtinvolved to administer
intelligence tests to the subjects by pointing
out the importance of ensuring that (a) the
learning disabled students are not mentally
retarded, and (b) the results have to be clear
of confounds from differential intelligence
levels between the normally achieving and
learning disabled subjects. However, the
school board officials insisted that a child
was not removed from his/her classroom
for more than 20-25 minutes. To meet
that requirement four items from the Performance Tests of the WISC-R (1970) were
chosen. These items included: Picture Completion, Picture Arrangement, Block Design,
and Object Assembly. Because learning disabled children tend to perform poorer on
the Verbal Tests of the WISC (Hallahan,
1975; Bryan, 1978), the Performance Tests
were chosen as a more valid base of comparison between them and their normally
achieving peers.
Materials
The following set of sentences was generated to allow a plausible consequence of

action which could be implicitlyand explicitly

stated. Cues were comprised of an explicitly
stated noun (underlined, e.g., "playground")
and the consequence (enclosed in parentheses,
e.g., "skinned his knee"). These sentences
were slightly modified versions of those
used by Paris, Lindauer and Cox (1977).
A. He ate a huge pizza (and his stomach
ached).
1. My brother fell down on the playground (and skinned his knee).
2. The teacher turned out the lights for
the movie (and the room got dark).
3. Her pants were too tight when she
bent over (so they ripped).
4. He accidentallyplayed in poison ivy
(and itched).
5. Mary dropped the glass of juice (and
broke it).
6. She slammed the door shut on her
hand (and hurt her fingers).
7. John sat on the balloon (and it made
a loud noise).
8. The kitten tipped over the dish (and
spilled the milk).
B. She told a great joke (and everyone
laughed).
Two lists of sentences were generated from
these materials and were given to different
groups of subjects. The Explicit Sentence
list consisted of the above sentences with
the consequences (in parentheses) stated
explicitly. The Implicit Sentence list omitted
the consequence clauses and only implied the
outcome. The retrievalcues for each sentence
were identical for both Explicit and Implicit
Sentence lists and for all subjects. Cues were
comprised of an explicitlystated noun (underlined) and the consequence (enclosed in
parentheses). Noun cues were always explicitly given but consequence cues referred
to implied outcomes in the Implicit Sentence
condition and overtly stated events in the
Explicit list. The noun cues were chosen
without regard to sentence constituency since
previous research indicated no differences
among subjects, verbs, and objects as explicit
cues (Paris& Lindauer, 1976).
Sentences (A) and (B) were used to control for primacy and recency effects in
recall. Hence, the results on these two
sentences were not scored.

Volume 3, Winter1980

This content downloaded from 62.122.76.45 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 07:49:30 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

31

Experimental Design
The experimental design was a 2 (Grades)
x 2 (Good vs. Learning Disabled Readers)
x 2 (Sentences: Explicit vs. Implicit) x 2
(Order: Word or Phrase first as retrieval
cues) factorial, involving eight independent
groups.
Procedure
Four groups of 16 subjects each received
the Explicit Sentence list. These groups consisted of: (a) second-grade learning disabled
children; (b) second-grade good readers;
(c) sixth-grade learning disabled children,
and (d) sixth-grade good readers. Four additional groups of 16 subjects each received
the ImplicitSentence list. The composition of
the groups was the same as in the Explicit
Sentence listcondition.
All subjects were seen individually and
were informed that the purpose of the experimental task was to determine how many
sentences people could remember. The eight
experimental sentences plus the two filler
sentences at the beginning and end of
each list were read to subjects who then
repeated them aloud. The presentation order
of the eight sentences was randomized for
each subject. The cued recall test followed
a four-minute interpolated activity in which
the subject had to circle designated numbers
on sheets of random numbers.
During recall, each subject was given both
the noun and consequence cues for each
sentence. These 16 cues were balanced for
order of presentation so that the explicit noun
was the first cue for half of the sentences
and the consequence was the first cue for
the other half of the list for each subject.
The sentences were balanced across subjects
so that each sentence received the two cues
in first and second order with the same
frequency. The order of sentences in recall
was the same for all subjects.
Prior to their recall of the sentences, the
subjects were told that cues would be given
that would be related to each of the sentences, but that the cue might or might
not have been part of the sentence. They
were also instructed that the sentences could
be recalled more than once, with the maximal number of recalls being three. For any
subject who had two or three recalls on
32

a particularsentence, s/he was always scored

on the last recall.
Scoring. For each sentence, the subject
received one point if s/he correctly recalled
two out of three items in the sequence
of the subject-verb-predicate. This scoring
procedure was modeled after the one reported by Paris and Lindauer (1976) and
Paris, Lindauer, and Cox (1978). Two graduate students carried out scoring independently. Disagreement occurred in very few
cases. Such disagreement was quickly resolved in a discussion.
RESULTS
The results were analyzed by a 2 (Groups)
x 2 (Grades) x 2 (Sentence Type) x 2
(Cues) repeated measures of variance. The
results indicated that all main effects were
significant. Thus, good readers recalled significantly more sentences than learning disabled
readers [F(1,112) = 18.20, p <.0001]. Grade
six children demonstrated better performance
than grade two children [F(1,112) = 18.01,
p <.0001]. The children recalled more explicit sentences than implicit sentences
Noun cues
[F(1,112) = 86.51, p<.001].
were more effective than consequence cues
[F(1,112) = 26.34, p<.001]. Moreover,
the Group x Sentence Type interaction was
significant [F(1,112) = 8.91, p <.01]. Tests
of simple main effects indicated that good
readers and learning disabled readers did
not differ in the recall of explicit sentences
[F(1,112) <1, N.S.]. Good readers, however, recalled significantly more implicit sentences than learning disabled readers
[F(1,112) = 5.74, p<.05]. No other significantinteractionswere obtained.
Planned comparisons were performed on
the Implicit Sentence list to compare the
recall of sentences with implied consequence
cues between good readers and learning
disabled readers. The results indicated that
in grade two, good readers recalled significantly more sentences with implied consequence cues than learning disabled readers
[t.01 (one-tailed), 112 = 2.62, p <.01].
Second-grade learning disabled readers also
recalled significantly fewer sentences with
implied consequence cues than they did with
explicit noun cues [t.01 (one-tailed) = 3.47,
p <.01]. In grade six, similar results were

Learning DisabilityQuarterly

This content downloaded from 62.122.76.45 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 07:49:30 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

TABLEI
Percentage of Correctly Recalled Sentences
in Good and Learning Disabled Children

Good Readers
Grade2
Grade 6
Learning Disabled Readers
Grade 2

Grade6

obtained. Good readers recalled significantly

more sentences with implied consequence
cues than learning disabled readers [t.0, (onetailed) = 4.95, p <.01]. Learning disabled
readers here also recalled significantly fewer
sentences with implied consequence cues
than they did with explicit noun cues
[t.0, (one-tailed) = 3.77. p <.01].
Additionally, second-grade learning disabled readers recalled significantly more sentences with explicit consequence cues than
sentences with implicit consequence cues
[t.0, (one-tailed) = 7.22. p<.01]. Similar
results were obtained with sixth-grade learning disabled readers [t.0,, (one-tailed) = 6.99,
p <.01].

DISCUSSION
We had predicted that because they are
inactive learners (Torgesen, 1977b), learning
disabled children would not spontaneously
generate constructive operations and inferential processing strategies in encoding. Given
sentences with implied consequences, they
would not spontaneously construct and infer
the implied consequences. Hence, in recall.
they would not be facilitated by the given

Explicit Sentences
Nouns
Consequences

Implicit Sentences
Nouns
Consequences

70.63

62.63

54.88

33.13

79.88

70.38

70.72

56.50

70.50

58.00

37.75

19.00

73.63

67.50

50.13

29.75

retrieval cues which were the implied consequences of corresponding sentences.

The results substantiated our prediction.
Indeed, learning disabled children in both
grades, two and six, recalled significantly
fewer implicit sentences than good readers
in the same grades. Our results are taken
to support Torgesen's (1977b) conceptualization of the learning disabled child as an
inactive learner. However, they do not suggest that the learning disabled child has a
specific ability deficit in comprehending and
remembering sentences with implied consequences. His/her poor recall of such sentences is seen to reflect what Flavell (1977,
1970) terms a "production deficiency". The
latter term provides an alternative view of a
child's inadequate performance at a given
task other than one of ability deficits. It
suggests that the child may have the cognitive mediators or strategies required for
successful task performance, but failed to
spontaneously and appropriately produce
them (Brown & Deloache, 1978). To test
our notion, we conducted the following
experiment.
Volume 3. Winter1980

This content downloaded from 62.122.76.45 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 07:49:30 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

33

EXPERIMENT II
Their good recall of sentences with explicitly
stated consequences indicated that learning
disabled children in grades two and six were
capable of recallingthe consequences in sentences. They did, however, recall significantly
fewer sentences with implied consequences.
Their failure to use indirect cues to access or
retrieve what they knew indicates a lack of
constructiveprocessingand inferentialstrategies
in their initial encoding of the sentences.
Experiment II was designed to activate the
cognitively inactive learning disabled children
to generate constructive inferentialprocessing
in encoding by means of a questioning technique. If the learning disabled child's poor
recall of sentences with implied consequences
reflects "productiondeficiency" (Flavell, 1977,
1970), the questioningtechnique would induce
him/her to use constructive operations and
inferentialstrategies. We predicted, therefore,
that this simple manipulation would enhance
learning disabled children's comprehension
and retention of implied consequences.
METHOD
Because of our interest in the effects of
questions/prompts on learning disabled children's comprehension and retention of implied
information,it was decided to use only learning disabled subjects. Our rationale was that
the use of normally achieving children as
additional controls would provide information
peripheralto our interest. Moreover, the informationwould be redundantsince they generally
have higher recall levels than learning disabled children (Wong, 1978). In discussing
research issues in learning disabilities, Senf
(1976) has urged researchers to use designs
involving entirely learning disabled subjects
for similarreasons.

Subjects
Sixteen grade two learning disabled children and 16 grade six learning disabled
children were randomly drawn from two
schools different from the ones involved in
Experiment I. However, they were from the
same school district and were located
in the same kind of socioeconomic area as
those in Experiment I. The school also subscribed to the same criteria of classifying
and assessing learning disabilities stated previously.
34

The mean Performance I.Q. on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-R,
1976) of the grade two learning disabled
children was 99.40 (S.D. = 13.23). Their
mean reading performance on the Gates
McGinitie Reading Tests was 1.1 below
grade level (S.D. = .02). The mean Performance I.Q. of the grade six learning
disabledchildrenwas 102.55 (S.D. = 12.01).
Their mean reading performance on the
Gates McGinitie Reading Tests was 1.78
grades below grade level (S.D. = 0.42).
Procedure
The experimenter read each sentence to
the subject, excluding the implied consequence (i.e., the words in parenthesis).
The subject repeated it aloud. The experimenter then asked the subject: "What do
you think happens after?" (for example,
"My brother fell down on the playground.")
If the subject answered "Gets hurt," the
experimenter continued with "Tell me more.
In what way would 'my brother' get hurt?"
The subject's answer did not need to conform absolutely to the contents of the implied
consequence. To be acceptable, his/her
answer, however, had to involve mention
of the part of the body which got hurt
OR how it got hurt; for example, "leg",
"scraped" for the sentence "My brother fell
down on the playground." The questioning
stopped when the subject's response satisfied
criterion. S/he was given no feedback, however, on the correctness of the response.
The experimenter's questions were consistently: "What do you think happens after
(the stated event) in the sentence?" and
"Tell me more." The questioning technique
was systematically used on all the sentences
for subjects in this treatment condition.
The subjects were given the same interpolating activity as in Experiment I prior
to the cued recall. Moreover, the instructions for cued recall and the procedure for
subsequent scoring of data were the same
as in Experiment I.
The same two graduatestudents who scored
the data in Experiment I also scored the
data here. They disagreed over only two
cases. Their disagreement was quickly resolved in a briefdiscussion.

Learning DisabilityQuarterly

This content downloaded from 62.122.76.45 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 07:49:30 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

information would result in his/her

generating the necessary constructive operations and inferentialstrategies to comprehend
the implied outcomes in the respective sentences. Consequently, given the retrieval
cues, s/he would recall more sentences
with implied consequences. The retrieval
cues facilitated recall because they "made
contact" with or successfully accessed the
constructed representations of the sentences.
The manipulation here consisted of questions
or prompts.
The results clearly demonstrated that the
learning disabled readers sustained a "production deficiency". Indeed, they had the
requisite constructive abilities and inferential
processing strategies in their cognitive repertoire. They failed, however, to spontaneously
and appropriately produce and apply them
when they should. Nevertheless, under structured prompting, they were able to generate
the necessary processing strategies. Consequently, they dramatically improved their
recall of these sentences with implied consequences.
The results of Experiment II provided
additional support of Torgesen's (1977b)
conceptualization of the learning disabled
child as an inactive learner. The results
strongly suggest that the learning disabled
child does not necessarily have a specific
memory deficit in comprehending and remembering implied information. Rather, the
findings of this experiment suggest that the
learning disabled child does not appear to

Data Analyses
Because the learning disabled second and
sixth graders in the Implicit Sentence Condition in Experiment I had not been given
questions/prompts, they served as ready
controls for the subjects in this experiment.
Hence, their data were pooled with the
present data to provide data for statistical
analysis in a complete factorial.
The experimental design used in the data
analysis was a 2 (Grades: Grade 2 vs.
Grade 6) x 2 (Questions/Prompts: Presence
vs. Absence) factorial. There were a total of
64 learning disabled children with 16 subjects per cell.

RESULTSAND DISCUSSION
The results indicated a significant main
effect of questions/prompts [F(1,60) = 49.42,
p <.0001]. The use of a question/prompt
procedure significantlyincreased comprehension and retention of implied information in
learning disabled readers. Moreover, the
absence of a significant Grades x Questions/Prompts interaction indicated that the
procedure was equally effective with younger
second graders and with sixth graders
[F(1,60) <1, p > .05].
It is recalled that Experiment II was conducted to investigate whether or not learning disabled readers' poor recall of sentences
with implied consequences reflects "production deficiency" (cf. Flavell, 1977, 1970).
Specifically, if it was a case of "production
deficiency", any manipulation to induce the
learning disabled reader to actively process

TABLE2
of
Percentage Correctly Recalled Implicit Sentences
by Grade and Question/Prompts in
Learning Disabled Children
Without the Use of
With the Use of
Questions /Prompts Questions /Prompts
Grade 2
Grade 6

71.88%
75.75%

28.13%
39.88%

Volume 3, Winter1980

This content downloaded from 62.122.76.45 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 07:49:30 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

35

make inferences about what s/he reads as

actively as the good reader. Consequently,
s/he may be suitably described as showing
"production deficiency" in his/her poor task
performance. More importantly, however,
the present results indicated that s/he can
be "activated"to generate needed processing
strategies for successful performance at a
given specific task.
GENERAL DISCUSSION
The pith of the findings here is that
learningdisabled children do not automatically
generate constructive operations and inferential processing strategies in encoding of sentences with implied information. This is not to
suggest that they lack the cognitive abilities
for constructive and inferential processing.
The results of Experiment IIshowed that they
have the cognitive abilities. However, they
demonstrated such abilities only under certain conditions. Specifically, given structured
questions/prompts, learning disabled children demonstrated constructive inferential
processing. Their subsequent recall level
matched that of the good readers.
The learning disabled children's initially
poor performance basically reflects a "production deficiency" (Flavell, 1977, 1970).
Because they are "inactive learners" who
do not customarily assume responsibilities
for their own learning (cf. Torgesen, 1977b),
it is understandable that they would not
automaticallyengage in constructiveoperations.
We are, however, left with a searching
question. Why do learning disabled children
perpetually need to be cued to generate
cognitive strategies necessary for successful
performance at a particulartask? It is important to note that they required structured
(as in Experiment II) and directive cues
(cf. Wong, 1978). A possible answer may
come from the concept of "learned helplessness" (Seligman, 1975). Cumulative frustrations from years of academic failure have
eroded learning disabled children's motivation to learn and to sustain efforts at learning (Senf, 1976). Consequently, they may
have lost all initiative at learning academic
skills and rely increasingly on the teacher
for generating (devising) strategies to help
them to learn and to remember difficult
materials (e.g., b/d discriminations). The
36

learning disabled children's dependent attitudes in learning may have generalized to

other tasks resembling academic tasks. Although the concept of "learned helplessness"
appears a feasible explanation for the question posed, empiricalresearch on it is obviously
needed. Future research on this issue appears warranted.
Finally, at the practical level, our results
suggest that Learning Assistance teachers
may use similar questions/prompts procedures to increase learning disabled students'
inferential processing of reading materials. In
particular,adapted versions of the questions/
prompts procedure here could be used to
help learning disabled students successfully
tackle difficult inferential questions. It is recalled that our questions/prompts procedure
was very simple, consisting of two questions.
In view of this, the obtained effects are
rather striking.
REFERENCES
Adelman, H.S. Learningproblems:Part I. An
interactionalview of causality.AcademicTherapy, 1970-71, 6, 117-123.
Brown,A.L., & DeLoache,J.S. Skills,plansand
self-regulation.In R. Siegler (Ed.), CarnegieMellon symposium on cognition. Hillside, NJ:

LawrenceErlbaumAssociates,1977.
Craik, F.I.M., & Lockhart,R.S. Levels of processing: A frameworkfor memory research.
Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 1972, 11, 671-684.

Craik,F.I.M., & Tulving,E. Depth of processing

and the retentionof wordsin episodicmemory.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General,

1975, 104, 268-294.

Flavell, J.H. Memory. In J.H. Flavell (Ed.),
Cognitive development. Hillsdale, NJ: Law-

rence Erlbaum Associates, 1977, 183-218.

Flavell, J.H. Developmentalstudies of mediated
memory.In H.W. Reese & L.P. Lipsitt(Eds.),
Advances in child development and behavior

(Vol. 5). New York: Academic Press, 1970,

181-211.
Meachem,J. The developmentof memoryabilities
in the individualand society. HumanDevelopment, 1972, 15, 205-228.

Morrison,F.J., Giordani,B., & Nagy, I. Reading

disability:An information-processing
analysis.
Science, 1977, 196, 77-79.

Paris, S.G. Integrationand inference in children'scomprehensionand memory.InF. Restle,

R. Shiffrin,J. Castellan,H. Lindman,& D. Pisoni
(Eds.), Cognitivetheory (Vol. 1). New Jersey:

Learning DisabilityQuarterly

This content downloaded from 62.122.76.45 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 07:49:30 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Erlbaumand Associates, 1975.

Paris, S.G., & Lindauer, B.K. The role of inference
in children's comprehension and memory for
sentences. Cognitive Psychology, 1976, 8, 217,
227.
Senf, G.M. Future research needs in learning
disabilities. In R.P. Anderson & C.G. Halcomb
(Eds.), Learning-disabilities/minimalbrain dysfunction syndrome: Research perspectives and
application. Springfield: Charles C. Thomas,
1976, 249-267.
Seligman, M.E. Helplessness. San Francisco, CA:
Freeman and Co., 1975.
Stein, N.L., & Glenn, C.G. A developmental
study of children's recall of story material.
Paper presented at the Society for Research
in Child Development, Denver, 1975.
Torgesen, J.K. Memorizationprocesses in reading
disabled children. Journal of Educational Psychology, 1977, 69, 571-578. (a)

Torgesen, J.K. The role of nonspecific factors in

the task performance of learning disabled children: A theoretical assessment. Journal of

LearningDisabilities,1977, 10, 27-34. (b)

Waller, G.T. Children's recognition memory for
written sentences: A comparison of good and
poor readers. Child Development, 1976, 47,

90-95.
Wong, B., Wong, R., & Foth, D. Recalling and
clustering of verbal materialsamong normal and
poor readers. Bulletin of the Psychonomic
Society, 1977, 10, 375-378.
Wong, B. The effects of directive cues on the
organization of memory and recall in good and
poor readers. Journal of Educational Research,
1978, 72, 32-38.
Vellutino, F.R. Alternative conceptualizations of
dyslexia: Evidence in support of a verbaldeficit hypothesis. Harvard Educational Review,
1977, 47, 334-354.

Volume 3, Winter1980

This content downloaded from 62.122.76.45 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 07:49:30 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

37