An intervention programme for children with moderate learning difficulties

Children with learning difficulties typically demonstrate problems generalising what they have learned in specific contexts to new situations. Intervention programmes that teach children regulatory skills have been shown to overcome these problems for children with reading difficulties. This study applies the principles that underlie such interventions to the design of a programme for children with more general learning difficulties.

The aim of the study reported here was to design and evaluate an intervention programme which would facilitate the transfer of skills learned over the course of the intervention to different types of task.

A total of 41 children (aged 13-16 yrs; 14 females, 27 males) with moderate learning difficulties participated in the intervention programme.

The children participated in a twelve-week intervention programme designed to promote regulatory strategies over a range of activities. The children worked in pairs and were guided by an adult who provided explicit instruction and modelled appropriate strategies. The children were assessed before and after the programme to determine whether improvements in strategic behaviour were evident and whether this generalised to new situations.

Gains made in regulatory skills over the course of the intervention were accompanied by improvements in other performance measures such as reading and IQ.

Even after a relatively short intervention, which focused on the development of regulatory skills, significant improvements on a range of tasks were observed for a group of children with moderate learning difficulties.