Background & Objectives: Specific learning disorder is one of the most common childhood neurodevelopmental disorders that severely affects the lives of many children around the world. Therefore, much research has been done on the etiology and treatment of this phenomenon. There is increasing evidence that a particularly related problem with learning disorders is emotional processing, and this problem is the basis of many disorders, including learning disorders. Several therapeutic and educational techniques have been investigated to improve the symptoms and problems of students with specific learning disorders. Most children with learning disorders have problems with working memory. Therefore, it seems that focusing on memory can be effective in improving the emotional processing of these children. One of these memory–focused treatment methods is memory–based cognitive rehabilitation, and research on the effectiveness of this program in various fields has been promising; however, what is evident is that the above program has not been applied to the emotional processing of students with specific learning disorders; therefore, the present study was conducted with the aim of determining the effectiveness of memory–based cognitive rehabilitation on emotional processing of sixth–grade male students with specific learning disorder.

Methods: This study was a quasi–experimental study with a pretest–posttest design with an experimental group and a control group. The statistical population included sixth–grade male students with specific learning disorder in elementary schools in Ardabil in the academic year 2024–2025, from which 30 eligible volunteers were placed in two experimental and control groups of 15 people using a convenience sampling method after meeting the inclusion criteria. The procedure was carried out as follows: from the two educational districts of Ardabil, District 1 was randomly selected. Then, among the boys’ elementary schools in this district, and based on the cooperation announced by six schools, a screening test was administered in these schools with the assistance of a group of psychologists specializing in learning disorders. Subsequently, children with definite symptoms of learning disorders and poor neuropsychological skills were identified. It is worth mentioning that these measures were taken after obtaining permission from the Department of Education to conduct the research and in compliance with ethical considerations, including the completion of a voluntary consent form by parents for their children’s participation in the study. Inclusion criteria for participants were male gender, sixth–grade education, residency in Ardabil city, willingness to participate in the research, absence of any physical or mental illnesses, and no stuttering or attention–deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) (based on information included in the students' health records). Exclusion criteria for participants were non–cooperation in the research, receiving similar interventions concurrently, and absence from more than three training sessions. Ethical Considerations were as follows: all participants received verbal information about the research and participated voluntarily; participants were assured that all their information would remain confidential and was not recorded to protect their privacy. The instruments used in this study were Colorado Learning Difficulties Questionnaire (CLDQ) (Willcutt et al., 2011) and Emotional Processing Scale (Baker et al., 2010). The memory–based cognitive rehabilitation program (Sholberg & Mateer, 2001) was conducted as ten 60–minute sessions only for the experimental group. Data were analyzed using SPSS software, version 27, at two levels: descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) and inferential statistics (univariate analysis of covariance). The significance level for statistical tests was set at 0.05.

Results: The results showed that the effect of memory–based cognitive rehabilitation on reducing emotional processing in the experimental group was significant after removing the pretest effect (p = 0.004). According to the effect size, 27.4% of the changes in emotional processing in the posttest phase was explained by receiving memory–based cognitive rehabilitation.

Conclusion: Based on research findings, memory–based cognitive rehabilitation can lead to improvements in emotional processing for students with learning disorder. Therefore, its application in specialized clinics for exceptional children is recommended.