Thought Processes in Culturally Deprived and Learning Disabled Children—A Comparative Study

Abstract

The aim of this study was to examine the degree to which the nature of thought processes of culturally deprived and learning disabled children differ. On the superficial level, at least, some similarities between the cognitive functioning of the two populations seems apparent. Among the deficit areas that have been noted for both are attention and concentration, visuomotor skills, and language and thought processes. The following four groups of subjects, each comprising 20 children aged eight to ten, were studied: intact children, culturally deprived children, children with learning disabilities, and culturally deprived children with learning disabilities. All children were presented with the same number of items from tests in common use in psychological clinics. The tests used were the Similarities and Block Design subtests of the WISC-R, the Raven Progressive Matrices, and the Bender-Gestalt Test. The children's responses to these tests were assigned conventional scores as well as scores based upon additional types of analysis in order to assess the child's approach to the cognitive tasks. The results of both the traditional scoring system and the qualitative scores differentiated between poor cognitive performances which are related to cultural deprivation and poor cognitive performances which are related to learning disability.