Word Problems, Language, & Comorbid Learning Disabilities

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PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT COVID-19 school closures have resulted in remote learning conditions for sustained periods over the past year. This is projected to exact a devastating toll on the learning of this country’s school-age population, and the magnitude of that learning loss is expected to be uneven. The target population in the Vanderbilt Learning Disabilities Innovation Hub is children with comorbid reading & math learning disabilities (LDs). This is likely to be among the worst affected subgroups due to the differential severity of these children’s academic deficits. Further increasing vulnerability is the racial and ethnic diversity of the Hub Project study’ sample. Meanwhile, the challenges created by COVID-19’s school closures provide this LD Hub with unique scientific opportunities for deepening insights on the Hub Project’s Specific Aim. The first unique opportunity is the alternating delivery of remote and in-person schooling, which represents a naturally occurring alternating condition design, which permits innovative within-cohort contrasts. The second opportunity is the availability of separate pre- and during-pandemic Hub study cohorts, permitting innovative between-cohort contrasts. The third unique scientific opportunity is the close communications with families the Hub maintains during COVID’s remote assessments and interventions, which permits unusual access for conducting meaningful parent interviews. The proposed supplement takes advantage of these scientific opportunities to deepen insight on the Hub Project’s Specific Aim, which centers on the processes involved in reciprocal learning across reading & math in this population. This Supplement’s analyses focus on three issues: (1) how reciprocity of learning between reading & math for children with comorbid reading & math LDs differs as a function of pandemic status (pre-pandemic, which was in-person schooling, vs. pandemic, which is a mix of remote and in-person schooling) and how scaffolding, designed to map theoretical commonalities between reading & math, moderates this effect; (2) how fidelity in delivering theoretically guided scaffolding differs as a function of delivery mode (remote vs. in-person during the pandemic); and (3) how parent views on children’s reading & math development, connections between reading & development, and teaching quality differ as a function of delivery mode (remote vs. in-person during the pandemic) and how theoretically guided scaffolding moderates parent views. The hope is that these insights will not only deepen understanding about comorbid reading & math LDs but also guide researchers and educators on how to conduct remote schooling in productive ways and improve academic progress during remote schooling for vulnerable populations.