Do children with low scholastic achievement show social-emotional problems?

The aim of this study is to explore whether children with poor achievement in reading, orthography, and/or mathematics have social-emotional problems. Poor achievers can be separated into those with learning disabilities (in terms of ICD-10, F81, Specific developmental disorders of scholastic skills) and those with so-called "learning difficulties". Those difficulties differ just in one respect from learning disabilities: the defined discrepancy between the impaired scholastic performance and intelligence is not met. The results of 317 primary school students show that poor achievement increases the risk for certain social-emotional problems, irrespective of whether the achievement problems are related to literacy or mathematics. However, children with combined impairments in both scholastic areas were found to be more seriously affected by social-emotional problems than children with achievement problems in only one area. Furthermore, the results of children with combined impairments indicate that learning disabilities are associated with more pronounced behavioral, social, and attentional impairments than are learning difficulties.