Middle Eastern Journal of Disability Studies

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Towhidi A, Karimi Bahrasmani A. The Effectiveness of Attention Training on Math Academic Achievement and Academic Self-efficacy in Students with Borderline Intelligence Quotient. MEJDS 2018; 8 :45-45
URL: http://jdisabilstud.org/article-1-1091-en.html

Background & Objective: The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR) of the American Psychiatric Association has introduced the Borderline Intellectual Functioning (BIF) individuals under the category of a group of individuals with intelligence deficiencies, with 70-85 IQ, and individuals who are prone to many obstacles including academic achievement. About 13.5-14% of the population of any society constitutes borderline intelligence individuals; therefore, these individuals have to share the same educational, developmental opportunities as others do. Academic achievement defined as the cumulative of knowledge, skills, and abilities in cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains, including math academic achievement. Due to the short attention span of the borderline intelligence, low intelligence and or slow-paced students are not able to learn materials and solve problems with the speed of their peers and their classmates. Attention span refers to the extent that the individuals can perceive as many as objects in a short segment of time as they can. Slowly paced individuals do not have such ability and confront with specific problems; thus, the slow-paced students do not gain the necessary and the efficient academic achievements. Attention is composed of a series of complex cognitive processes that put the focus on goals and working to achieve them, along with retaining and keeping information while being alert for an extended period. If one were not able to pay attention to class material, he or she would pay attention to things that are not related to class activities. In rehabilitation sense, having an ability to focus on curriculum materials to acquire educational objectives is necessary because it speeds up learning. Math academic achievement affects borderline individuals, and it is related to the academic self-efficacy. It defined as a trait, as a characteristic, or as a global self-confidence in mastering various abilities related to environmental demands and perceiving self-competence; it is the individual's belief in having the skills to finish a job in a specific condition that would have an effect on his or her effort and persistence. The individuals with high self-efficacy pay attention to their class activities. Bandura believes that low achieved individuals have less self-efficacy and slow paced ones have low self-efficacy as well. Therefore, instructing the attention would have an impact on the slow-paced children’s academic performance. Hence, the purpose of the present research is to investigate the effect of the attention training on math academic achievement and the academic self-efficacy items on students with borderline IQ.
Methods: The research method was experimental with a pretest-posttest design with a control group. Using the simple cluster sampling method, from the entire 4th-grade elementary slow-paced girl students of the first district in Kerman, 24 borderline students were recruited and placed into two control and experimental groups, each group 12 students. The experimental group trained for 12 sessions of 45 minutes, while the control group did not receive any training. The training sessions based on the “Learning disabilities: From identification to intervention.” book and “Effect of Panoura and Filippo's metacognitive instruction model on improving knowledge and metacognitive problem-solving skills among students with a special disability in dyscalculia” article. To gather data Wechsler Intelligence Scale was used as a borderline screening tool and the math academic achievement test and academic self-efficacy questionnaire used as the measurement tools. Data analysed with multivariable analyses of covariance (MANCOVA) method was used, along with the aid of SPSS-20.
Results: Findings indicated that the impact of attention training on the slow-paced students with the math academic achievement (p˂0.001), with the aptitude (p˂0.001), and with the context (p˂0.001) are significant but with the effort is not significant.
Conclusion: Overall, can be concluded that attention training, considering the aptitude and the context, leads to improving the slow-paced girl students’ math academic achievement and attention training would be useful on their academic self-efficacy.