Assessment of learning disabilities among a pharmacy student population

American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, Spring 1999 by Boyd, James A, McKenzie, Constance A, Holmes, Thomas J Jr

In general, deficiencies in visual perception will require multisensory approaches to learning: combining auditory, visual and tactile-kinesthetic modes. In courses like anatomy, where names and relationships between body parts must be learned, students might learn best if they could handle (tactile-kinesthetic) anatomical models [in addition to simply viewing them]. These students may further enhance their learning by developing cognitive approaches for remembering diagrams by verbalizing (reading aloud) a description of the details to be learned; and by placing information on flash cards for continuous repetition and review.

Individuals with strong auditory perception tend to be very good with learning new names, have strong vocabularies, and find foreign languages fairly easy to master. Individuals with weak auditory skills tend to have to learn terms and names very deliberately. Verbal concepts must make sense, or must be presented very logically. Simply verbalizing a list of facts is likely to result in frustration. Dictation would be extremely difficult for these individuals. Course outlines, overhead projections, slides and supplemental readings will be very beneficial to the individuals in the weak auditory group.

The tests in the screening battery that require coding are related to a student's ability to learn new tasks. Students with learning disabilities tend to learn new tasks more slowly than the "average" student. Students with poor results in the coding sections are most likely to be the last students in the exam room. These students are likely to require much more time to start answering essay questions. Multiple choice type questions may be particularly time-consuming for these students. Studies have demonstrated that time extension is not likely to improve scores for the average student, but additional time almost always helps the learning disabled student(18). Remediation for students scoring low in this area is to allow them to slow down on exams, because many times they run out of time, so they feel they must hurry, which only exacerbates the problem. All the national testing agencies that administer exams (e.g., SAT, ACT, PCAT and NAPLEX) provide extra time to individuals who have an appropriately documented learning disability.

Summary of Procedure. The test battery was administered to 214 Campbell University entry-level PharmD students on one day by Dr. Stanley Antanoff. He also provided training so that the investigators could administer future tests. The student population consisted of 72 first professional year students, 68 second professional year students, and 74 third professional year students; no final year students were included as they were involved in off-campus clerkship activities. Most of the tests were graded and scored by the investigators; one of the visual memory and visual copy tests along with the writing sample was analyzed by an independent educational psychologist. A twopage detailed individual history was collected which included questions like: "Did you ever repeat or skip a grade in school?" "Which subjects are particularly difficult or easy for you?" and a self-assessment of strengths and weaknesses. Each student history was also sent to the psychologist.