High ability/learning disabled students: How are they different? Gifted Child Quarterly

The purpose of the research was to investigate what characteristics distinguish High Ability/LD students from learning disabled students with average cognitive abili-ty and from high ability students. One hundred-twelve high ability or learning disabled students in grades four through six participated in the study: High Ability, High Ability/LD, and LD/Average. A variety of instruments was used to assess and compare cognitive and motiva-tional patterns in the three groups. Discriminant ana-lyses indicated that the three groups are distinguisha-ble. As might be expected, the greatest group differ-ence existed between high ability nondisabled students and both learning disabled populations. A second dis-criminant function provided information about differ