Is attribution retraining necessary? Use of self-regulation procedures for enhancing the reading comprehension strategies of children with learning disabilities.

The present study investigates the need to include explicit attribution retraining in a program designed to teach reading comprehension strategies to children with learning disabilities (LD). The program had two versions: (a) self-regulation procedures and (b) self-regulation procedures plus explicit attributional retraining. Sixty children with LD were assigned to two training groups (with and without attributional retraining) and a control group. Twenty normally achieving students served as an additional control group. The effects were assessed via attribution measures and cognitive and metacognitive reading comprehension tests. Results indicated that children from both training groups improved on measures of cognitive strategies, but their gains were very low on metacognitive measures. In addition, regardless of training condition, students from both groups showed equally good attribution profiles.