JOURNAL OF APPLIED DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY ], 313-328 (1981) The Pattern of Excepti0nality Across Domains in Learning Disabled Children LYNNE FEAGANS AND JAMES D. MCKINNEY Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center University of North Carolina The purpose of this study was to examine the intellectual, academic and be- havioral competencies in learning disabled and normally achieving children. Fifty-eight pairs of children (LD and non-LD) in first, second, and third grade were administered the WISC-R and the PLAT; were observed with the SCAN Observational System in their regular classroom; and had teachers who filled out the Classroom Behavior Inventory. Results indicated that the LD children per- formed less well on the WISC-R and the PLAT. There was no evidence of greater variability within the LD children nor was there a different pattern of performance in comparison to normally achieving children. The learning disabled children were consistently rated by their classroom teachers as displaying less desirable classroom behavior. The Observational System SCAN corroborated these re- sults, indicating that LD children were more off-task than non-LD children. These results suggest that we re-examine the definition of learning disabilities in the public school to put more emphasis on behavioral indices and to refocus the interpretation of test scatter as an index of learning disabilities. The term "learning disability" was introduced in 1963 to describe a collection of disorders associated with poor school achievement which could not be attributed to sensory handicaps, mental retardation, emotional disturbance, or environmen- tal disadvantage (Kirk, 1964; The National Advisory Committee on Handicapped Children, 1967). Over the past 15 years a variety of characteristics have been attributed to learning disabled children which were incorporated into various This research was supported by the Bureau of Education for the Handicapped Grant No. G-00-760-5224 given to James D. McKinney. Portions of the article are based upon a paper presented at the Gatlinburg Conference on Research in Mental Retardation/Developmental Disabilities, Gulf Shores, Alabama, 1979. The authors wish to thank Jennifer Ferguson and Charles K. Burnett for their help in the collection and analysis of the data and for many useful suggestions. Requests for reprints should be sent to Lynne Feagans, Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center, University of North Carolina, Highway 54-Bypass, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27514. 313