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  IN THE NEWS
Positive Attitude Trumps IQ, Good Grades as Success Predictor for LD Adults For children with learning disabilities, accepting those problems may be the most important step toward finding success and happiness as adults, according to a long-term study of LD students in Southern California. Through extensive evaluations and interviews of 41 former students of the Frostig Center in Pasadena, researchers found that self-awareness, positive attitudes toward overcoming or adapting to LDs and seeking support from outside sources were more accurate predictors of success than IQ or academic achievement. Based on these findings, published earlier this year in the journal Learning Disabilities Research and Practice, Dr. Marshall Raskind and Dr. Roberta Goldberg argue that educators should broaden their approaches for LD students to include life skills and psychological and emotional support to help them cope with their disabilities when they become adults. Learning disabilities are "life disabilities," they noted, arguing these students require attention to more than just academics. The researchers argued educators should help LD students develop "compensatory" strategies rather than try to fix the disabilities, focusing on what the students can do well rather than trying so hard to remediate the things they do not do well. In these days of heightened pressure to demonstrate school-wide academic achievement, such a shift in approach may be difficult, they acknowledged, but Raskind said, "Maybe it makes sense to put a little more effort, or just equal effort, on some of these other things." Long-term Data Finally Available The 20-year longitudinal study, "Patterns of Change and Predictors of Success in Individuals with Learning Disabilities," was a follow-up to a similar evaluation of the same students 10 years earlier and is believed to be one of the few studies available on the long-term effects of learning disabilities. The 20-year study examined 41 men and women ages 28 through 35 who were diagnosed with learning disabilities upon entering the Frostig Center as children. The subjects' mean IQ was 95. To isolate the study for learning disabilities, the researchers chose subjects with no severe emotional disturbances or uncorrected sensory deficits when they were initially diagnosed and enrolled at the school. The researchers did evaluate four subjects with both learning disabilities and a physical disability or health problem, to get a sense of their quality of life and success levels. Those subjects ranked very low in quality of life compared to the LD-only subjects, even with the positive attitudes and self-awareness that proved a success indicator for the others. "For those individuals that had another condition, it was just too much of a blow to enable them to have measures of success," Raskind said. Raskind and Goldberg used the students' case records from their days at Frostig, lengthy personal interviews with the subjects, self-evaluations the subjects completed, cognitive and achievement testing, "domain ratings" and other methods to analyze the subjects' success levels. In gauging "domain ratings" as a factor of the person's success, the researchers examined each subject's employment, education, level of independence, family and social relationships, crime and substance abuse, physical health and psychological health. The study also evaluated so-called "success attributes," a set of characteristics that help define the person's attitude and effort put into overcoming the learning disabilities. These included self-awareness - the adult's ability to accept the existence of a learning disability and identify his or her strengths and weaknesses rather than dwell solely on the negative aspects of the problem. Proactivity and perseverance, the extent to which the person was willing to work to get around the LDs, was also measured. Emotional stability, goal-setting and the use of social support systems were also considered "success attributes." Positive, Active Approaches The subjects judged as successful in the various "domain" categories appeared to have taken charge of their lives from adolescence on. They found areas of academic strengths, took a more active role in making life decisions and sought out assistive technologies or people to help them succeed. For example, they made use of therapy and mentors, and they had supportive, but not overprotective, families to help. The researchers were careful not to indict overprotective parents for their children's adult troubles, however. "Parents are overprotective for a reason, because their youngsters are vulnerable," Goldberg said. This zeal can be turned into a positive factor if the parents become advocates for their children, she noted. "But there does come a point where the parent needs to let go," Goldberg continued, arguing she and Raskind suspect a link between the independence encouraged by parents when the children are young and the child's success level later in life. By contrast, members of the unsuccessful group tended to internalize their anger about having learning disabilities. Those judged unsuccessful were after 20 years still fighting the fact that they had a learning disability and what it meant to their lives, the researchers said, and they rarely were willing to admit the problem and seek help. The subjects also differed in their ability to adjust to the label "LD." While the successful subjects rejected the negative images and connotations of that label, the unsuccessful people referred to themselves as "dumb" and considered being LD a negative trait, the researchers said. Raskind and Goldberg said they plan to continue evaluating the data they and their predecessors have collected, to look more closely at the impact of labeling on a child with learning disabilities. Asked about his own attitude toward labeling, Raskind said he is torn between its positive and negative impacts. He said he supports the use of the term "disability" because of the need for funding and services that are triggered only by such specific classifications. In addition, he said, calling them "learning differences" tends to understate the issue. On the other hand, Raskind said, the subjects' strong reactions to the labels indicate a need for further examination of how a child's attitude is affected and how the child responds. Predicting Life Success According to Raskind and Goldberg, the "success attributes" turned out to be the most powerful quantitative predictors of success in the study. Though the 20-year study supported this conclusion with data, the researchers said they could see the trend emerging even after 10 years. The combined "success attributes" the researchers measured were the primary predictors of employment and educational attainment, overshadowing IQ and academic ability. This suggests, the researchers say, that effort can produce results even where ability may not. The success attributes were also the sole predictors of independent living and community involvement. The researchers also reported interesting results for the group of LD adults as a whole, regardless of their level of success. The group's full-time employment rate was close to the overall rate for L.A. County, with 46 percent of the LD adults and 50 percent of adults in the county working. However, another 42 percent of the LD adults were unemployed. The adults in the study also had lower success in personal relationships and independence levels. While 48 percent of adults in L.A. County are married and living on their own, the researchers said, only 24 percent of the study's subjects were. Though in their late 20s and early 30s, nearly one-third of the LD adults were still single and living with their parents. Based on subjects' self-evaluations, Raskind and Goldberg found that the learning disability's potential to cause stress and anxiety dropped as the study subjects got older. This was particularly noticeable once the subjects were out of school and allowed to pursue their own interests, rather than subjects that were dictated to them, Raskind said. The subjects also seemed to have relatively underdeveloped abilities in areas in which they are naturally talented. The researchers argue this is because the students were not given enough opportunity during school to explore their talents and appropriate career paths, which in turn may explain why many of them deliberately dropped conventional academic pursuits as soon as possible after leaving school. However, members of the successful group overcame their early academic constraints to seek out jobs and group interaction that did not put them in trying situations in which their LDs would have a significant impact. They also chose companions whose personalities were positive influences on them and complemented their strengths and weaknesses, the researchers said. Despite the stress level dropping as they got older, the subjects reported that their LDs remained the most significant and consistent influence on the quality of their lives. The subjects also showed a high incidence, 42 percent, of major psychological disturbance by the time the 20-year evaluations were conducted. Raskind and Goldberg plan to publish a second paper on their findings by next fall, based on further evaluation of the information they collected. In addition to the labeling issue, Raskind and Goldberg said they plan to examine whether people are born with "success attributes" or they can be taught. "Our hunch is there's probably a little of both," Goldberg said, but noted that the adults in this study are highly unlikely to have obtained those characteristics while at the Frostig Center, which at the time of their enrollment was primarily focused on remediation. Other Resources Websites 
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