Research Paper
The International Journal of Indian Psychology
ISSN 2348-5396 (e) | ISSN: 2349-3429 (p)
Volume 7, Issue 4, DIP: 18.01.005/20190704
DOI: 10.25215/0704.005
http://www.ijip.in | October- December, 2019
© 2019, S. Venkatesan & L. Lokesh; licensee IJIP. This is an Open Access Research distributed under the terms
of the Creative Commons Attribution License (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits
unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any Medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Impulsivity in students with specific learning disabilities
S. Venkatesan
1
, L. Lokesh
2
*
ABSTRACT
Background: It has often asked whether impulsivity is a stable response style of students
with specific learning disabilities. There is no straightforward emphatic answer to this
question. The available literature on the theme is fraught with issues related to the definition
of the terms impulsivity as well as learning disabilities. Method: Notwithstanding all this,
this study uses a cross-sectional one-shot exploratory survey design to profile the nature,
degree and extent in the presence and patterns of impulsivity by adopting a self-cum-
significant other report technique for 134 respondents identified as having academic delays
and specific learning disabilities to answer a simple abridged and adapted version of 25-item
Barratt Impulsiveness Scale along a four-point Likert scale. Results: The overall impulsivity
score is more than the assumed and expected mean values for children on the scale. Further,
domain analysis on 1st and 2nd order factors on the scale show significantly different trends
for major domains of attention, motor, and non-planning (p: <0.001) with no such differences
for sub-domains of non-planning in self-control and cognitive complexity (p: >0.05). There
appears to be no influence of the studied demographic variables like age, gender, school
curriculum, and grades in the impulsivity scores of these children. Item analysis shows that
these students are affected by ‘extraneous thoughts,’ ‘get easily bored when solving thought
problems,’ ‘do not like to think about complex problems,’ and, so on. The implications of the
study for developing impulsivity reduction strategies and its limitations are presented.
Keywords: Children with learning disability, impulsivity, attention, self-control, executive
functions
Most children have times when they act as a whim without really thinking. When they
behave so, they are dubbed careless, mean, or rude. When they are impulsive, they have
trouble following rules consistently, cannot wait for their turn, and might end becoming
aggressive toward others. They may grab things from others, or intrude during games and
conversation, overreact to disappointment, criticism, and frustration. They always want to
have the last word and first turn. They do not understand how their words or actions affect
others or what could be the consequences of their actions. Impulsivity can occur due to
1
Professor & Head, Department of Clinical Psychology in All India Institute of Speech and Hearing, under
Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India, located at Manasagangotri, Mysore: 570 006,
Karnataka, India.
2
Clinical Psychologist-Grade II, Department of Clinical Psychology in All India Institute of Speech and
Hearing, under Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India, located at Manasagangotri, Mysore:
570 006, Karnataka, India.
*Responding Author
Received: September 22, 2019; Revision Received: October 22, 2019; Accepted: December 25, 2019