The Learning Disabled Label as a Biasing Factor in the Visual Motor Performance of Normal Children

Abstract

That the application of disability labels to children can affect their performance has been widely claimed by labeling critics but not clearly demonstrated. The present investigation addresses the question of whether the application of the specific label “learning disabilities” could affect the complex visual-motor integration performance of normal fourth-graders. Student experimenters individually trained and tested eight children who had been randomly selected and labeled either learning disabled or normal. Each child's performance was scored subjectively by the student experimenter and objectively by an event recorder. Results indicated that girls represented to experimenters as learning disabled performed significantly lower on a task of complex visual-motor integration than girls represented as normal. The performance of boys was not significantly affected. Expectancy effects were shown not to be a product of observer bias or recording error and were found in general and specific performance measures.