This article assumes that the traditional psychometric approach to understanding performance discrepancies in learning disabled (LD) children may not be appropriate, given the dynamic nature of these children's cognitive processes. Three ways cognitive psychology can apply to the study of performance discrepancies are discussed. These applications include (a) explaining the variance in test performance, (b) focusing on competence, and (c) revealing processing discrepancies when the overt preformances of LD and nonlearning disabled (NLD) children are similar. The article concludes that current approaches to understanding performance discrepancies are insensitive to how LD children represent and access knowledge.
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