by Hugh M. Lewis

Confusion-The state or condition of being unclear of mind or purpose, or of being mistaken (about one thing for another). Unclear, ambiguous, blurry.

To the extent that we can all stand some improvement in our behavior and psychological functioning, it can be said that we all therefore suffer some mild form of learning disability. To the extent that we all desire to be at the top of our respective games in life in a competitive world organized by knowledge and driven by the desire for success and the avoidance and fear of failure, we must attribute to an obstinate, habitual incapacity to learn and improve ourselves in our performance the distance between where we find ourselves and where we wish we were in life. The difference therefore between those whom we label socially and institutionally as "learning disabled" and those we do not may be as much a matter of degree, of severity, and difference than of kind.

The phenomenological field of waking consciousness is a steady stream of signals and stimuli from both the outer world and our inner selves, evoking a series of responses and reactions the appropriateness of which may be deemed a measure of our fitness and relative adaptation to our circumstances. This basic anthropological imperative is a fundamental question of survival that goes back to the very origins of our species. There is no human experience of reality or behavioral response to it that has not become mediated by our large and super-complex brains. This noetic mediation of human experience and behavior represents the symbolic transformation of human adaptive functioning from that of brute instinct and organic nature to that of a sophisticated cultural being in a human-made world. We call this transformation symbolic because we find that the structure of human symbolization is the basis for human mental functional organization, involving gestalt pattern recognition of figure-field forms, part-whole relationships, and propositional constructs that link one event or thing to the next. Symbolic forms of our consciousness are automatically and unconsciously superimposed upon our stream of experience in the shaping, chunking, organization and articulation of this experience. The brain, as a symbolic information processing system, acts like a sophisticated filter that selects and channels and organizes the stream of signals into meaningful units. If this stream of signals, which may analytically really be like a series of film frames sliding past our consciousness, suffers any gaps or holes, it becomes the job of some of our mental apparatus to smooth over and fill in the gaps in such a manner as to maintain at least the appearance of the continuity of noetic experience of reality. When we watch a film we do not see the individual frames or the animated character, we only see what we interpret to be a continuous stream of action. Our consciousness automatically fills in all the gaps of the event sequence with a kind of "native observer intuition". No one has yet sufficiently explained this sense of human intuition to make guesses, to fill in the gaps in the larger picture, and to "fly on auto-pilot." If the film that we are watching suddenly jumps off its threaded track, then we lose a clear picture, and just see a blur of frames flitting by on the screen. In a very similar way can we view that class of behavioral phenomena that we refer to as learning disorders. If the continuity of the stream of consciousness is somehow interrupted, then the sense of continuity is lost. Lost also becomes our capacity to adapt to changing circumstances, to process or assimilate new information in a meaningful manner, and to form or modify a working model of reality that serves us and guides us in our daily pathways of phenomenological experience.

Learning disabilities in children and adults are a broad and relative range of specific dysfunctions relating to perception, acquisition and cognitive organization of knowledge, or to the performance of basic literacy or related academic skills, where the person's mental intelligence and brain physiology appears to be otherwise normal. Learning disabilities can be assigned in cases where there are apparent no other mitigating conditions such as cerebral palsy, autism, aphasia, genetic or congenital syndrome, mental or personality disorder, or organically based low intelligence that can account for such disabilities. Learning disabilities can be thought of as individually idiosyncratic in profile and association of specific patterning, and can include perceptual, linguistic, behavioral, emotional, memory and other cognitive processing problems. Diagnosis of learning disabilities can be therefore complex and differentially equivocal. Each profile is to be considered unique to the individual in question, and each associated problem set can be assigned a set of basic dimensions that include social, behavioral, emotional, cognitive and psychological components. There appear to be issues of both primary and secondary gain associated with learning disorders that need to be addressed in any rehabilitative or therapeutic strategy. Such a treatment strategy for generalized disorders appears to require a comprehensive approach that incorporates psychological, linguistic, physical, cybernetic, sociological and anthropological components.

It is the contention of this paper that the general class of learning disabilities are to be considered based upon a complex set of interacting, complementary factors that interfere with performance, processing and retention of new information, and learning, which I define as the developmental acquisition and integrative differentiation of progressively stratified skills and knowledge that are contextually appropriate for human adaptation. In general, I construe the broad class of learning disabilities to be therefore general problems relating to the psychological integration of symbolic reality when other, more severe forms of disorder or dysfunction cannot be clearly attributed. It is my opinion at this time that the exact causes of such disabilities cannot be determined in any direct, causal sense, but is most likely the net result of a combination of interacting factors that serve together to interfere with normal cognitive apparatus involved in symbolic acquisition. Numerous interacting factors constitute differential variables that lead to near astronomical complexity of what I would define, after Chomsky, as the universal acquisition device. The human brain has been evolutionarily designed in a unique manner to process symbolic information that is linguistically mediated and phenomenologically integrated with adaptive behavior. The organization of the entire structure of the brain has been devoted to this purpose and represents an evolutionary phenomenon that is unique in the universe.

It is important to distinguish between generalized learning disabilities, which I take to be related to the clinical category of minimal brain dysfunction (MBD for short), and a broad range of what may be called specialized learning dysfunctions or syndromes that vary in relative severity and detail of manifestation. A person may lack any clear-cut specialized form of learning syndrome or dysfunction, and yet still suffer a set of symptoms relating to a general learning disability. On the other hand, one or more relatively severe specialized learning disorders may well admit the individual into the growing ranks of the learning disabled. The concern of this paper is what I would designated as a generalized learning disability that has broad applicability to the entire range of specialized dysfunctions, and secondarily to the possible interrelationship of specialized dysfunctions within a larger adaptive framework.

Before proceeding, it is important to emphasize one caveat regarding generalized or specialized learning disabilities and the conception of intelligence, or what might be called innate intellectual capacity. Learning disabilities are not necessarily directly correlated with low measures of intelligence. It is assumed that most genuine learning disabilities that interfere with the acquisition of new information and the formation and retention of appropriate response patterning may indirectly affect the expression of intelligence, but are not intrinsic to the innate intellectual capacity, especially if such an individual had no clear sign of learning disability. Conventional or standardized measures of intelligence, based upon performance on skill and knowledge achievement tests, and generally called "IQ" or "intelligence quotient." Such tests are in themselves not unproblematic or unambiguous nor should their somewhat reified results be set in stone as solid scientific truth.

Because of the inherent multi-factorial complexity of the human acquisition device, diagnosis and prescribed methods of rehabilitative treatment in the case of either specific dysfunctions or generalized disorders therefore tend to be indirect and to involve mixed strategies of compensatory, substitutive or what may be called counter-adaptive reinforcement. In general, simplification and externalization of reference points providing reinforcement for basic normal behavior, leads to an improved prognosis and performance.

The human brain can be defined as a general acquisition device. Noam Chomsky was correct in the sense at least that this acquisition device has a general, universal structure that serves to define the psychic unity of humankind, and that this structure becomes inaugurated automatically in a progressive series of stages during its development. This deeper structure of the human psyche follows basic implicit rules of order that can be identified in terms of theory of automata and intelligence. At the same time, so complex and finely tuned does this brain based acquisition device seem to be, and so dependent upon environmental and especially social feedback, that we can characterize the average child as a complex but underdetermined learning system that is constituted by a number of interacting and interrelated variables. The outcomes and state-path trajectory of this system is partially stochastic and a function of its on-going interactions in a larger nexus of systemic relationships in social and larger cultural realities.

Descriptively, I would define learning disabilities as a phenomenal and chronic state of apperceptive confusion of the individual that inhibits a positive learning cycle recognition, internalization, reorganization and externalization of adaptive response pattern and that induces instead a regressive cycle of symbolic response that interferes with adaptive ego-formation. By confusion I mean quite literally a state of being confused, or of mistaken or contradictory signaling that inhibits normal modes of pattern processing of the neural apparatus. In everyday, normal consciousness, certain rates of error are expected on a random basis, and non-random error provides the source of feedback that leads to corrective behavior that we call learning. In a state of learning disabled or confused consciousness, these rates of error or gaps in the information processing are in such an anomalous state of disrepair that significant information or communication cannot occur at a level that is necessary for the normal adaptation of the individual in their life world. Basic neural apparatus of signal processing that would be necessary under normal circumstances breaks down as the error rate increases. This can be demonstrated with normal perception and cognition under extremely abnormal circumstances, and, from a psychologically relative point of view, extremely abnormal perception and cognition under normal circumstances.

It seems to me vitally important to emphasize the relativity and comparative severity of any particular case or instance of learning disorder that is attributed to a person. It is important first of all to define normal measures and standards of performance within a statistical distribution of a large sample. These standards must represent composite scores based upon explicit criterion of performance and response patterning, and not just upon generalized rubrics or nomenclature without clear empirical substantiation. In this sense, all of us may "suffer" some form of learning disability in some areas at one time or another. Attribution of a clear case of being generally or specifically learning disabled must therefore depend greatly on the degree to which the performance and response patterning of an individual on a range of related tasks falls outside of the standard normal range established for those tasks.

Before proceeding it is important to state several hypothesis regarding learning disabilities that are based upon what I would call the theory of the symbolic integration of brain function:

1. Functional differentiation of human brain function is variable and alterable and includes a number of specific regions and generalized structures (laterality, fore-brain/back brain, outer brain/inner brain, focal structures and generalized patterning, etc.)

The complexity and variability of this structure is such that there is a wide range of individual variation of its exact functional patterning.

2. The symbolic organization of the human brain is both contextually dependent and biologically based upon a developmental scheduling of critical periods and phases of neuronal growth and differentiation that are progressively and hierarchically stratified in terms of shifting locii and centers of control.

3. In human acquisition and cognitive development, there is a selective refinement of skills and knowledge that tends to favor increasing control by higher order (outer, forebrain, left-side) cerebral functioning over lower level response patterning.

4. If higher order cerebral control functions are somehow inconsistent or unreliable to the task of successfully processing new information or generating appropriate response pattern, then the rain will automatically tend to switch back control upon reinforcement of lower level functioning and dependency upon what might be considered more reliable lower-brain function. The more this happens, the more upper level control structures become compromised in their developmental refinement.

5. Anything interfering with higher level cognitive function will tend automatically therefore to reinforce lower level control structures and will induce a form of acquisitional inertia that will be seen as the formation of an habitual complex of set and inflexible response patterns. These patterns can be regarded as repression mechanisms in the development and normal functioning of the individual ego.

6. As lower level control structures compete with higher level cognitive organization of the brain, the "marsh-mellow" principle tends to take effect. In general, a short-term primary gain that is experienced from dependence on lower level cognitive apparatus is traded upon for deferred gain that comes from achievement of longer-term rationalized goal structures. Secondary gain that comes through inverse cultural reinforcement may further favor emphasis upon primary versus deferred gain.

7. The consequence of trading off deferred gain and higher order control structures for primary gain is the short-changing of the normal symbolic functioning of brain-based behavior--effective displacement, sublimation, compensation and differentiation of symbolic behavior is undermined the acquisitional inertia and preference for less differentiated and desublimated control structures.

8. There is a long term social and behavioral consequence of this pattern, in terms that can be described in the sociology of knowledge as the formation and promotion of psychologically and sociologically discrepant realities. These discrepant realities become an embedded pattern of adult personality and a permanent part of adult character orientation, and may result in the progressive development of more severe mental disorders.

9. The modular partitioning and part-whole organization of both specialized and generalized brain functions entails furthermore that specific control structures may become dysfunctional or become bypassed in development or subsequent rehabilitation, and may result in partial and specialized forms of learning dysfunction rather than in total and generalized patterns. In other words, functional partitioning and control structures in the brain may become distributed between multiple competing centers, areas or loci, and the integration thus achieved.

10. Symbolic integration of the human brain, manifest in terms of behavioral response pattern, acquisitional and processing capacity, is always unfinished (stochastically underdetermined business) and it is not surprising therefore that there are frequent imperfections, mistakes of programming and the rise of a continuum of disorders in its subsequent state-path trajectory.

We can expect, consonant with this theory, that there may develop later in life a range of possible disorders, that vary in relative severity and in relative partiality or totality of involvement of control functions and areas of the brain. What each individual strives to achieve is a sense of relative noetic-adaptational equilibrium. This equilibrium is symbolically mediated by the brain. Relative disequilibrium may be partial and specialized or completely involve the entire apparatus of the brain. Disequilibriating control structures can be progressive in the long run, in the chaotic and non-linear sense that they grow increasingly imbalanced in relation to the other structures in the brain. It becomes possible that an individual may be "normal" in most areas of the brain-behavior framework, and yet become severely psychotic or psychopathic in partial and specialized areas of control function.

Of particular interest to me is the relationship of childhood disability with a general condition of what I would call incipient psychological neurosis of the individual, and with the relationship of a combination of biological and environmental factors that may induce anxiety, defined behaviorally, cognitively or perceptually, as a result of stress. R. B. White has stated (The Abnormal Personality, 1956) that "the core of a neurosis lies at the point where anxiety has blocked or distorted the learning process so that new learning essential to adjustment cannot take place." Neurosis generally refers to disabling psychological states impairing normal mental functioning but not totally disrupting or disorganizing a person's normal grasp of one's adaptive realities. The kinds and qualities of behavior and phenomenological experience found in extreme forms in neurotic patterns, are found in similar but less extreme forms in normal functioning individuals. The neurotic can see the problem, but cannot work the solution. Neurotic development is regarded generally as the consequence of aggravated reactions to life situations or problems that are attributed to internal conflicts and inappropriate defenses that make it extremely difficult for the person to cope with either external demand or the demands of one's own needs. External factors resulting in ambiguity, contradiction or confusion may initiate or exacerbate a neurotic condition. Neurotic symptoms and patterns of response are regarded as severely exaggerated attempts to cope or resolve these problems, but which attempts result in the perpetuation or aggravation of the problems rather than in their resolution. In the case of a child who is lacking the external cultural reinforcement necessary for normal acquisition, such a child can be construed as being entrapped in a neurosis-inducing situation that the child cannot by oneself resolve. Neurotic patterning is consistent with the personality pattern of the individual in general adaptive functioning, and is seen as representing an exaggeration of the normal psycho-dynamic pattern underlying character formation and reinforcement. "Neurosis is not a disease entity but an exaggerated continuation of mental functioning in the face of internal and external trouble and stress."

From a psycho-dynamic standpoint, we may refer to anxiety-inducing stressors as those symbolic stimuli which invoke automatic or uncontrollable responses in the individual that is deemed as deeply threatening to the ego or sense of reality of the individual. Neurotic response or reaction patterns can be seen as distorted or disturbed ego-defense mechanisms which serve to further induce the anxiety that invokes these ego-defense mechanisms in the first place. The basic learning cycle, that is seen as a form of positive equilibrium with second-order feedback, becomes, in the case of neurosis, a form of repressive negative feedback that hinders and closes down the learning cycle. "Severe anxiety, marked by the absence of any discernible appropriate cause, has the effect of producing emergency reaction whose object is to bring the disrupting state to an end as rapidly as possible. This reaction may take various forms, and the form that it does take defines the symptomology of he neurosis. Because anxiety makes it virtually impossible for the person to learn directly how to cope with his difficulty, the reaction that develops becomes self-defeating and maladaptive. Because the neurotic reaction has at least the effect of reducing the terrors of anxiety, it has a gain feature to it that leads the person to cling to his symptoms, and indeed to resist their removal. This fixedness of the neurosis is further reinforced by the secondary gains obtained through the development of the sick role with attendant sympathy and special care.

The rigidity of character of the neurotic personality may be correlated highly with strong ethnocentric tendencies, lack of sophisticated, highly differentiated, and rationalized ego-defense mechanisms, the marked occurrence of edge and repetition compulsions. I would correlate such behavior with what I would define as extreme forms of social and symbolic dependency. Dependency, being a relative term, can be said to be a major characteristic of the neurotic condition and the neurotic personality. We can find both forms of primary and secondary gain from the psychological and social reinforcement of the neurotic pattern. There is even something of a self-fulfilling prophecy in the labeling processes involved in the classification and application of many learning disabilities.

Neurotic patterning in children may be characterized as a form of generalized or non-specific neurosis that has not yet taken definitive shape. I would call this general class of symptoms pre-neurotic or proto-neurosis, and it is my contention that these take the form that is isomorphic with the general class of learning disabilities. It evidences itself in terms of field-dependency, various forms of neurotic perception, cognitive inhibition or confusion, communicative disrepair or disruption, preoccupation with fantasy and neurotic escape,

Neurosis is to be seen as a gate-way to more severe psychotic and psycho-pathological states of behavior, and, in its severest forms of obsessive-compulsive behavior, may provide a bridge into alternative states of mental illness. The outcomes and expressions of neurotic development in children may have fundamentally different outcomes than for adults, and it is possible that many adult neurosis or neurotic personalities have roots in early developmental neurosis of childhood.

Like adults, children afflicted with such neurosis may be unable to control their behavior or the condition that fosters the neurotic pattern in the first place. There is often apperceptive awareness of a condition of abnormality, but a basic inability to correct or prevent such abnormality in the first place. Neurotic patterning for the adult can be considered to be psychologically regressive, and for the child, similarly it can result in a condition of being developmentally non-progressive.

In general, we may say that where we find high incidence of neurotic patterning in the individual ego, we should expect to find a high positive correlation with a certain profile of learning disability, and we should expect to find a high negative correlation with normal performance on tasks. It may be possible to correlate certain definitive styles of neurotic response patterning with certain characteristic traits or suites of traits associated with particular types of learning disability profile.

The prediction of neurotic response pattern in symbolic framing tasks that would be associated with learning disorder in both general and specific ways. We can expect common and recurrent patterns of blocking, simplification or non-differentiation of pattern, lack of part-whole response patterning, field and frame dependency, pattern reversals or inversions, and general scores that occur below the level of average cultural performance, and an increased frequency of abnormal deviation from the normal culturally definable pattern of response.

Generalized symptoms of severe to moderate learning disabilities may include marked forms of any of the following:

a. Attention deficit and inability to sustain focus

b. Externalized, wandering focus complemented by exclusive, preoccupied focus or a restricted range of attention.

c. Marked Hyperactivity

d. Generalized Anxiety

e. Perseveration and compulsive repetition of behavioral response.

f. Generalized physical or physiological response

g. Poor impulse control

h. Poor motor coordination skills

i. Disrepair of perceptual processing apparatus

j. Disrepair of cognitive processing and retention/recall.

Before one can proceed with a diagnosis and analysis of an individuals patterned response, one must understand the pattern response of the particular ethno-cultural orientation of which the individual is a part. Furthermore, these generalized symptoms may involve as well one or more specialized learning dysfunctions.

I would define extreme cases of culture shock as relative and temporary phases of mental illness. If one removes the conditions creating that state of disorientation and disrepair, one can quickly return the individual to a normal modality of functioning. Similarly, destruction of cultural contexts through processes of destructive acculturation or deculturation will result in a form identified by Robert Lifton as "desymbolization" exhibiting symptoms similar to those characterizing "learning disabilities." I would in this case define culture shock attendant with cross-cultural displacement and relocation as the equivalent of a learning disability. Alice suffered a form of fictitious learning disability when she fell down the rabbit hole and walked through the looking glass, and the world she discovered on the other side was not that much different than the kind of world many people must live in every day. All people suffer some form of learning disability some times, depending upon moods, deep-seated rhythms, unconscious repressions, stress, frameworks of interaction with others, relationships and social identity. We all have moments of temporary memory lapse, of twisted tongues, spelling errors, No one can be said to be the ideal or perfect learner, as it is clear that making mistakes is how we learn in the first place. Observation of children between four and six years old reveals a great many normal syntactic and semantic errors being made. The children are testing out their skills, and, by trial and error and continuous reinforcement, continuously refining these over time. That some children are "advanced" along this learning curve, and others behind and slow to catch up. We must seriously ask ourselves, as we confront possible worlds of our own making, whether the disability exists in the child or in the learning context that the child must confront.

Ruth Benedict most clearly articulated the concept of cultural relativity in her seminal paper "Anthropology and the Abnormal" and this doctrine can be summarized along the following points (after Offer & Sabshin, 1966: 68):

1. There is a universal spectrum of human variability of type that occurs across all cultural contexts.

2. Each culture allows to flourish only a limited range of the wider arc of human possibility, and this tends to be those that best fit the dominant configuration for the culture.

3. The vast majority of individuals in any society will through plasticity of personality and the effects of enculturation, be made to conform, more or less, to the dominant configuration of the culture.

4. There will occur in any society a range of minority "types" who are deviant from the normal range defined by that society and who do not fit successfully within the dominant configuration--these are considered "abnormal" people.

5. The classification and distribution of "normal" and "abnormal" types in any society is relative to the cultural configuration of that society.

Though the issue of "type" in anthropology has undergone significant development, and the metaethical implications of cultural relativism as a doctrine has been called into question and criticized, Benedict and made a clear and certain call to universal tolerance and a broadening of the range of "normality" to encompass a broader spectrum of natural human variation. To date, this call has remained largely unheeded and ignored in the larger world, and only partial social progress has been achieved in the structural and social integration of individuals that do not comfortably fit into normal frameworks.

I have in my own research extended the general notion of relativism in anthropological perspective to embrace a wider conception that I call "anthropological relativity." In short, the doctrine says that all knowledge is anthropologically situated in the human knower, and is subject therefore to the constraints and limitations of this knower. As observers and participants in any human context, there occurs in that context a noetic equilibrium that can be characterized generally as complex, underdetermined and therefore chaotic in its outcomes. The act of observing and participation in these knowledge contexts entails an inescapable form of influence and interplay with the equilibrium occurring in that context. We can, in other words, have no completely objective or non-arbitrary relationship with human knowledge, whether this context is socially constructed or psychological constructed from a solipsistic standpoint. From this standpoint therefore, we cannot claim that the worldview of a learning disabled child, for instance, is any less valid or less coherent from the worldview of a prodigal child.

I have developed through research and theoretical scholarship a framework of the anthropological construction of reality and a coordinate body of methods that I have called in general symbolic framing. In doing so, I have utilized the theoretical work of Heinz Werner in the comparative psychology of child development, and have adopted a modified gestalt and phenomenological framework in which learning and the noetic development of a child is the direct consequence of increasing symbolic differentiation and integration of the phenomenal field of the child's everyday experience. This process is invariably a social process that is mediated by significant other's in a child's life-world--the consequence of this mediation by a widening sphere of social relationships, culturally defined and constrained, is essential to the outcomes of this complex process of noetic formation of worldview. Increasing differentiation of the phenomenal field entails that the individual gains greater articulation over both the effective environment and the inner controls that mediate one's independent adaptation to the environment. This is marked by greater flexibility, greater individuation of style of response, more sophisticated ego-defense and internalized mechanisms of control, increased linguistic competency and greater behavioral coordination of response patterning. In this I wish to emphasize foremost the complementary and non-deterministic structure of the life-world context and the isomorphic symmetry of the noetic patterning of the individual.

The development of types and typologies has been at the center of anthropological theory and debate since Ruth Benedict, and has given rise to a systems approach and perspective (Bateson, Binford) that depends upon the empirical analysis. In relation to understanding learning disabilities, I have sought to apply a more sophisticated typology of human variability of stylistic differentiation of personality. I elaborate this in the final section of this paper, but at this point I wish to briefly address some of the relationships and implications of such a typology. At the outset, any such typology must be considered as a multidimensional construct in hyperspace, that, like the average 2.53 sized American family, does not exist in anything but statistical reality. Furthermore, the complexity of the resulting typologies we produce in the classification and organization of our knowledge of reality is more a function of the sophistication and complexity of our information and understanding than it is a direct reflection of the reality of the world per se. The two-dimensional, quadripartite typology that I suggest herein should be considered a model for people who live in a paper-drive, two dimensional world that lacks depth perspective or the influence of changing time.

To summarize this model at the outset, I will state that what I find are the recurrent patterning of a quadripartite typology that appears to recur in a similar and probably analogical manner across disciplines. The clearest treatment of this model in relation to child acquisition is in John and Beatrice Whitings' famous "Children of Six Cultures" study. I speculate in terms of cultural differentiation that a similar quadripartite patterning appears to recur in terms of differential cultural profiles (American, English, Overseas Hokkien Chinese, Mainland Han Chinese) in terms of general performance patterns on symbolic framing tasks and in terms of symbolic-behavioral structures of cultures (Kwakiutl; Athabaskan; Navajo; Apache). In terms of psychology, we find similiar differentiation of a quadripartite structure in terms of epistemological styles (Maruyama); personality structures (Jung); neurotic styles and types (Hysterical, Obsessive-Compulsive, Phobic and Somatized reaction); psychotic differentiation (Manic-Depressive; Schizophrenic; Paranoid; Psycho-pathic); in terms of Alfred Adler's four mistaken goals of learning (Power, Revenge, Attention, Inadequacy) such that we may illustrate these differentials in the following manner:

What I argue in the theory of symbolic integration is that differentiation of personality and cognitive development may proceed within the framework of a limited number of dimensions that can be cast in alternate psychological, sociological or anthropological frameworks of understanding. There is a trade-off in developmental differentiation between one set of dimensions or another. From the standpoint of systems science this patterning makes sense in terms of the dynamics of non-linear systems and non-linear control structures and the resultant state-path trajectories. Similar patterning can be found in adaptive models of population development in ecology. It is evident that cultural patterning does encourage stylistic differentiation of both personality orientation and cognitive and symbolic style in some directions for basic personality configuration and implicitly "dominant" types over others. In terms of symbolic and social structures of different cultural patterning, a similar differentiation of types or configurations can be found with different adaptive consequences. In terms of such a quadripartite model, in relation to learning disabilities, I make the following hypothesis:

1. There appears to be a rudimentary or basic type of pattern of symbolic integration that can be considered common and universal, and from which stylistic differentiation and elaboration may proceed in alternative directions based upon a variety of factors and multiple dimensions. I would claim that this basic pattern is universal in childhood and is shared by all people cross-culturally. Differentials of enculturation, cultural context and socialization and related patterns of acquisition result in relative promotion or demotion of certain cognitive and personality styles over another.

2. I make a claim for the occurrence of "epistemopathology" or the pathological consequences of what can be called "symbolic dysfunction" and symbolic distortion of human experience. This symbolic epistemopathology exists at the heart of what I have termed generalized learning disabilities and demonstrates a neurotic manner of basic relationship with experiencing the world and with ways of knowing reality. I would claim that an epistemopathological relationship in knowledge about anything is marked by the following characteristics:

a. narcissistic self-involvement or preoccupation

b. projective symbolic displacement of internalized constructs

c. symbolic dependence upon external cues or frames of reference

d. fear based motivation

e. generalized anxiety or "angst"

f. alienation, dissociation or self-distancing from the stimuli or object.

g. possible episodes of derealization and attendant primitive ideas of reference.

h. derepression of libidinal impulses and drives.

This basic relationship exhibits characteristic qualities of symbolic transference and propositional elaboration (symbolic rationalization and fantasy involvement) that can be considered to be pathological or at least exaggerated and unusual.

In addition to these traits, a child suffering from such epistemo-pathology will be marked with developmental immaturity of personality structure based upon nomothetic comparisons to normal growth age-grade curves, including mental, emotional and behavioral immaturity. Such a child will also tend to show regressive characteristics and lapses or episodes.

3. The base undifferentiated state of epistemo-pathology in childhood can be described in terms of generalized learning disability and minimal brain dysfunction.

4. The basic mechanism affecting this epistemo-pathological development in childhood can be said to be a form of induced symbolic frame dependency, which is a variant of the phenomenon referred to as field dependency and that involves the consistent short-circuiting of normal development of neural pathways for symbolic processing, organizaiton and articulation of information. Frame dependency can have either an externalized or an internalized form and may commonly alternate between these forms and indicates a lack of symbolic integration of basic control structures:

a. Externalized frame dependency entails exclusive preoccupation with external stimuli to the ignorance of internalized symbolic constructs or information.

b. Internalized frame dependency entails exclusive preoccupation with internalized symbolic constructs to the ignorance of external stimuli or informational sources.

5. The consequence of symbolic frame dependency is a short-circuiting of the normal neural pathways involved in symbolic integration of phenomenological experience and in the functioning of the brain as a general acquisition device, and the consequent reinforcement of alternative pathways and control structures that indicate a lack of integration.

6. The developmental trajectories of such epistemo-pathologies, which may only partially involve neural apparatus of the brain or completely involve the entire brain (severe epistemo-pathology) is entirely dependent upon the individual's ability to establish a subsequent sense of behavioral equilibrium and adjustment in a symbolically consonant manner. Either the individual may correct the disequilibrium for overall improvement of performance, develop coping or compensatory mechanisms that permit partial reintegration of experience, or fail to adjust or develop sufficient coping strategies leading to further partial or complete symbolic distintegration of ego- personality structure.

7. Control and remediation stratgies for correcting this basic form of epistemo-pathology entails the following comprehensive approach:

a. accurate testing diagnosis and correction of all basic sensory apparatus, sensori-motor coordination skills, and motor-activation patterns.

b. inducing generalized balance of brain function through the use of medications designed to stabilize behavior and to alleviate the exaggeration and aggravation of abnormal brain activity.

c. Analysis and restoration of a normal pattern of sleep activity

d. analysis and remediation of all non-verbal expressive and verbal communicative pathologies or disorders.

e. analysis and remediation of basic perceptual pattern recognition, processing, retention and recall, including both auditory and visual based modalities of experience through systematically applied symbolic framing procedures.

f. compensatory negative reinforcement of primary and secondary gain that may otherwise be realized from the perpetuation of the epistemopathological pattern coupled with positive reinforcement of appropriate behavioral response patterning.

g. symbolic elicitation, analysis and reformation through recathexsis of basic symbolic-relational constructs that are elicited projectively and that constitute the deeper psychical structure of personality, achieved through both verbal and nonverbal therapies.

The object of what follows in this paper is to briefly address the possible relationship of a body of methods I have developed in the framework of human systems theory, that I have in general named "symbolic framing" and the general problem of brain-based, environmentally situated learning disabilities and disorders, especially as these are defined within an educational framework. My intention is to offer a direction and methodological framework for further systematic inquiry, for making predictions and for the conduct of controlled experiments that will provide substantive evidence for or against the generalizable efficacy of this class of methods for both general and special educational purposes. It is felt that though a vast amount of research and resources have been involved in the study of learning disabilities, there is still much that is unknown about these areas and this is reflected in the reification and multiplication of analytical typologies relating to this area of knowledge and research. The consequence of this is possibly the obfuscation of clear-cut and substantive empirical definition of the real problem sets involved in this kind of research and the perpetuation of much misinformation in the literature regarding these disorders, which thus become reified as social constructions with a self-fulfilling function.

Symbolic framing methods were developed upon a theoretical framework in cross-cultural psychology and comparative anthropology, and represent the adaptation of a range of received methods to alternative theoretical frameworks that involved the relative disinvestment of deep psychoanalytic content and instead the focus upon cross-task and normative cross-sample correlations of surface response pattern. These tasks originally included the areas of perception (MPDT and variations, Rotating Frame Task, Koh's blocks, Pattern recognition tasks); projection (Rorschach, Harrower, adapted Inkblots); use of color (Luscher cards, Color Pyramids, Color association and pile sorts, Color Triads, Color-rank order, Color drawings); Drawing tasks (Human figure, Kinetic Action Family drawings, Symbolic Profile, assorted pattern drawing tasks; Basic things tasks (assorted rank order tasks, associations); Thematic Apperception Tasks (TAT, CAT, SAT); Dichotomous surveys and inventories; Sentence Frames and sentence completion tasks; Grids and miscellaneous ethnosemantic pile sorts. These tasks were field-tested and various versions of a Symbolic Framing battery were developed and subsequently tested, and this led later to the development of three other batteries designated as the Symbolic Differentiation battery and the Symbolic Analysis battery. Subsequent post-doctoral research that was focused upon the problem of second language acquisition led to the development of oral-auditory based methods and addressed more directly the problem of the application of these methods to curriculum instruction in language acquisition, adapting methods primarily from Phonic word attack strategies, basic and non-basic vocabulary, whole language approaches, communication strategies and the Peabody language development approach. A core set of oral-based exercises was developed, and a supplementary set of communication-activity based exercises was built around these. It is felt that though the first body of symbolic framing methods were primarily visual based and secondarily language based requiring nominal literacy skills, the second set of methods were almost exclusively oral and auditory based and are to be seen as essentially complementary to the former set. An attempt was made to provide a framework for the correlation and integration of visual and oral based methods late in the research in China, but unfortunate political events prevented the further conduct of this research.

Preparatory to this research, intensive research was conducted in the language acquisition of very young infants (1 to 2 years), which research suggests a natural brain based framework for human language as a system of symbolic mediation of reality. Early linguistic acquisition at this stage appears to be essential for the symbolic integration of the brain and human consciousness, permitting higher-order mediation of the experiential field. Most of this processing is semantic and behaviorally based at this stage, and therefore remains non-explicit and non-syntactically organized.

The theoretical basis of these combined methods that I have generally termed "symbolic framing" is rooted in a model of human perception, cognition and behavioral response. Human cognition is unique in nature because of the principles of the fundamental symbolic transformation of experience and therefore the basic symbolic dependency of human consciousness upon culturally constructed forms. The methods are broadly interpreted within the principles of Gestalt psychology--namely, all human perception and cognition involves pattern recognition in a figure-ground field. Ambiguous perception tends to block gestalt formation, which I interpret to be symbolic in structure, and creates errors or "gaps" in the field of perception. These gaps can be normally filled with symbolic content from memory structures in order to maintain what can be called the integrity of perception. There occurs an input-output feedback cycle therefore, which

is linguistically and behaviorally mediated, which permits the individual to achieve an adaptive level of responsive articulation and differentiation of the phenomenal field. I have found the processes and pattern of response to be essentially identical for both visual based and oral-auditory based methods, though the pathways of the brain involved are to some extent different and rely upon what I would call functionally differentiated

memory and cognitive processing structures.

During my research in Penang, Malaysia, in 1993-5, I developed a working model of symbolic framing that I used in the development of my symbolic framing methods, as shown in the diagram above.

While the principle object of the former studies were to validate central theoretical hypothesis concerning the nature of human cognition; demonstrate empirically and statistically the cultural foundation of symbolic behavior and to provide a core body of instruction methods particularly relating to language acquisition and improvement, no systematic effort has been made so far to utilize this same framework and body of techniques and tasks to the analysis and rehabilitation of behavioral and brain based learning disorders. Enough work has been done with a variety of individuals (brain-damaged, dyslexic, schizophrenic, illiterate, etc.) to strongly suggest the trends for further systematic research in this manner.

Before beginning my general discussion of the history and potential use of this body of methods to the study and possible rehabilitation of learning disorders, it is important to address certain nomenclature details. Normal function is assumed to encompass a range of variation of pattern, but yields in terms of symbolic framing tasks an expected average level or performance or response pattern. High scores on some tasks (low scores on others) will broadly indicate above average intelligence, well integrated and highly adaptive-responsive cognitive functioning, and the ability to tolerate and effectively handle stress and noise in the environment. The presupposition is that these individuals will demonstrate an average to above average capacity to learn from the environment, and to function independently in relation to the environment. By "learning" I am referring to the capacity to integrate, recall and utilize new information; to recognize and correct errors or mistakes in one's response patterning and modify one's response patterning in an appropriate manner; to effectively adapt to new circumstances and efficiently follow directions. Individual performance on such tasks can vary considerably from period to period, and is susceptible to a complex set of variables, such as emotional state, stress, hidden psychological variables, etc. It is only through the assessment and administration of an extended series of tasks and their cross-correlation that more robust measures or indicators of performance and inferable learning style/capacity can be obtained. It is also assumed that because those who are "high" learners will improve performance after repeated trials on the same or similar tasks done in series (which may be seen as conflating and skewing results, an example of anthropological relativity), those who are "low" learners will tend to have a shallow trajectory of improvement over repeat performance. From the standpoint of possibly adapting symbolic framing methodology to diagnosis and rehabilitation of mild to intermediate learning disabilities, the question becomes to what extent can specific methods be tailored and refined in a manner to improve this performance trajectory over time for poor performers, and what remedial measures can be undertaken that would permit such improvement.

Secondly, when we speak of learning disability and learning disorder, we must distinguish between what can be considered a "general" application of any such term to describe a person or set of people's overall functioning, and what we should consider to be a more specific and precise application of such terms to relatively discrete patterns of response (or lack of response) under certain well defined conditions. It is evident that we cannot clearly separate, in the composite performance of such individuals, what are ultimately environmental versus brain-based or behavioral factors, and what are emotional versus cognitive based patterns of response. In other words, we are dealing with a hypothetical "black box" that we have labeled "disordered," "dysfunctional" or "disabled" though we are implicitly comparing this nomothetically to what are received normative standards or sets of expectations, however inexplicitly defined. Any particular person's sense of "learning disorder" may cross-cut an entire spectrum of specific patterns of response, the relationship of which remains difficult if not impossible to determine in any causal or noncomplementary manner. We are left with the dilemma in rehabilitative techniques of attempting to solve problems that we do not have a firm hold of by recipes based often only on simple trial and error or upon some untested presupposition of relationship and cause. We have the dilemma of working both holistically and analytically with an individual who is idiographically unique in terms of disabilities and yet who must be labeled and treated in nearly exclusive nomothetic frameworks of understanding.

Before continuing, based upon my own very limited experience with what I would infer to be learning disabilities and related "disorders," I will offer a very basic functional classification of such behavioral response patterning based upon symbolic framing methodology:

1. Normal (expected) to above normal range of response patterning and performance over a series of assessments.

2. Poor or mildly deviant intermediate range of response patterning (poor performance) over the same series of assessments, but which otherwise fall within a statistically normal range of behavior, that I take to be indicative of either of situational, environmental or psychological factors relating primarily to stress or to some form of cultural deprivation in the learning environment.

3. Subnormal and moderately deviant response pattern over the same series of assessments that fall at the limits or just beyond the normal range of behavior, and that I take to be primarily indicative of relative lack of functional organization (integration) of the brain or alternatively severe levels of stress and disorganization of the environment (or a combination of both.)

4. Extreme or strongly abnormal patterns of response (again over the same series of inter-correlated tasks) that fall upon the extremes of the performance curve and that are indicative of some form of brain damage or relatively severe psychological syndrome or condition.

Hypothetically, if we were to infer a normal curve in hyperspace relating to the overall assessment of performance on a broad series of inter-correlated tasks, then we would expect a curve like the following:

What is evident from this system of classification is that the categories, in terms of an individual's consistent performance and possible range of variation, may overlap considerably such that a person normally functioning in the 1 level may periodically or sometimes slip into the 2 or even 3 level, but will rarely if ever found to occur in the 4 level. On the other hand, a person who consistently fall within the 3 level may sometimes slip into the 4 level, or sometimes work their way into the 2 or even one level. A person who suffers severe brain damage or dysfunction may consistently fall in the 4 range, and may sometimes find their way to the 3 or even 2 range, but can not be expected to achieve a range of normal adaptive response pattern (except perhaps in discrete ways).

In a preliminary manner, it is possible to fit a large range of response patterning to symbolic framing methods as I have used these in previous research to this framework to predict levels of performance on different tasks. What would be generated is a profile of numerous scores It would then entail being able to test these frameworks out systematically in a manner that would allow us to refine the predictions we could make regarding performance and response patterning. This can be accomplished, I believe at this time, in a fairly straightforward manner.

It would be important to develop clear and concise means of developing composite scoring systems that would encompass in a representative manner the multiple scores that can be generated by any single set of tasks. It is not uncommon for instance of a task like the MPDT, depending on the detail of analysis, to generate more than 20 or 30 separate scores. In general, the greater the detail of analysis used and the more specific and clearly defined the scoring category, the more objective and reliable the task and the less biased by scoring error or interpretive subjectivity. On the other hand, there is a risk of increasing spuriousness of attention to detail if there is not a firm theoretical and empirical basis for any particular scoring category.

An tentative example of this is provided in the table below:

(Note, the scores or ranges are fictitious, hypothetical examples, and do not represent any actual data)

These data do not accurately portray actual scoring systems, but are used only as an illustration. Many scoring systems work with both positive and negative scores, and these must be effectively combined in a manner not to conflate or mask significant dimensions or differentials that may exist in the data. Some scoring factors or categories may be relatively arbitrary, and the cut-off points, lacking normative samples, would be considered arbitrary as well. It is the performance of an individual or a group over a longer period of time that is of greater significance than on a profile that can be created in a single setting or period of time. Refinement of the entire symbolic framing methodology would entail that these score systems would become more precise, accurate and representative of realities of performance and response patterning over time. As they were left half-baked in China, mostly, they were still quite rough and ready.

When it comes to the consideration of a broad spectrum of learning disabilities, and the possible ranges of behavioral patterns associated with these specific disabilities, it becomes necessary to combine task performance on methods like symbolic framing with scoring systems based upon behavioral scans and naturalistic observation, as well as with experimental observations in controlled behavioral settings over a broader range of alternative behaviors. How well, in other words, would scores in any single category, much less over a range of different kinds of tasks, generalize from such performance to natural response patterning in everyday life. This remains a largely unanswered question. We cannot simple draw a correlation between a specific profile of response patterning on a set of integrated symbolic framing tasks and the behavior or overall performance of an individual in a normal behavioral context, especially if differential dimensions motivation, emotion, interference or social cues play a part in the outcomes of one context but not in another.

The analysis of these patterns across tasks depends upon a form of cluster analysis that I refer to as inter-correlational or "cross-correlational" analysis, and the object of such analysis ultimately would be the identification of hidden relationships and "hyper structures" that would reveal new information about dimensions and differentials in classes referred to broadly as "learning disabilities." Behind this would be an attempt at being able to develop a naturalistic classification system regarding the range and conditions relating to learning disabilities, in terms of the response patterning and relative performance on symbolic framing batteries. An example of the kind of structures evident in this form of analysis is depicted below:

In this diagram, the inversion of scores in cross-corelational matrices across different score samples, would yield a set of "hyper-structures" that would look something like the matrices in the diagram above. The set of points in hyper-structure "1" that exists nearest to the origin would represent the relational structures of "normal" to above normal response patterns, while those points connected by hyper-structure "4" that are on the perimeter nearest to the absolute values of 1 on the graph would represent those performance patterns that fit the fourth category of range four (strongly abnormal response) patterns. Subsequent performance showing improvement on any individual's or clustered groups patterns should show a movement from the perimeter increasingly towards the center, at least on some if not all of the points. I have generated structures like that in relation to one or other sample from various forms of tasks, though I have not yet completely interpreted the significance of these structures or their possible implications and presuppositions. These are not directly indicative of "significant" to insignificant correlation, as in these kinds of matrices only significant correlations are selected for further cross-corelational analysis, while insignificant values show no direct correlation tend to be selected out. In a sense, this approach can be called "meta-corelational" as it is built upon correlation matrices of other corelational matrices in which insignificant values are systematically removed.

From the standpoint of adopting a rehabilitative application for symbolic framing methodology, the efficiency and efficacy of such an applied framework would consist of being able to alter consistent, generalized function of individuals from one level to the at least the next highest level, partially if not completely. In other words, it is hoped that individuals who initially fall at the 3 level may learn to organize their behavioral and brain based functioning in such a manner as to be able to function consistently (at least some of the time) on the 2 level, and possibly to more frequently work at the 1 level. In other words, what would be expected is that individuals could achieve a kind of "meta-learning" strategy and habitus (an adaptive system) within a framework of tailored symbolic structuration, that would allow them to function consistent at least on the upper ends of their performance curve, if not better.

As a side note, it strikes me from observation in both an upper level special education and normal set of sixth grade classrooms, that the cut-off that seems to occur in these situations is between the 2 and the 3 levels, and that a few exceptional individuals in the 2 level are sent to special classes but otherwise integrated into the normal classroom. What I have noticed in these classrooms that are characterized by low substandard average performance, is that many more individuals are occurring in the 2 range who are not being effectively dealt within by normal curriculum only. At the same time, individuals in the 3 category who could probably profit from partial integration in a normal classroom tend to be segregated on a full time basis from the normal classroom.

Part of the challenge therefore of adapting symbolic framing methodology is in designing a system and alternative body of applied methods that would, in total and partial context, provide the kind of conditioning framework that would promote improved performance in a consistent and general manner. It entails extending symbolic framing research to encompass and include the elicitation, observation, analysis and modification of behavioral responses patterns in experimental and natural (i.e., normal, culturally defined) behavioral settings. This had been partially accomplished in follow-up research in application of such methods in normal classroom settings in China in relation to language acquisition, and demonstrated significant improvement over a relatively short period of time.

Several caveats ought to be considered in this challenge:

1. Individual students need to be dealt with both idiothetically and nomothetically.

2. Definitions (and hence expectations) of both normal and "abnormal" behavioral response need to be broadened to encompass the total range of behavioral patterning possible.

3. An individual's strengths can be built upon and weakness recognized and minimized.

4. Even severe cases of learning disorder can profit from normalized contexts and interaction, though demanding exceptional intervention strategies.

5. Core intensive methods can be adopted aiming at specific problem areas alongside of a blanket, integrated approach utilizing complementary extensive methods that fit within appropriate environmental frameworks, build upon context, and promote communication and sharing.

6. Learning strategies and techniques adopted must be: a.) as active and interactive as possible; and b.) must be streamlined within a received, modular organizational framework (in other words, students need to be provided with a flexible adaptive structure, and cannot be expected to create this structure for themselves).

In reference to the last caveat above, instructional/learning strategies are intended to be integral with assessment strategies, and response patterning and performance require the controlled adaptive framework within which to behavioral sets and patterns of response may be conditioned and systematically modified. If we have an eagle with a damaged wing, we do not fix the wing and expect that the eagle, once healed, should be able to fly back out into the wilderness. The eagle must undergo a series of training and testing trials designed to slowly build upon and improve its flying performance until it can function once again upon a normal par.

Symbolic framing methodology, creatively applied in a variety of contexts, offers a integrative approach to understanding, analyzing and dealing with learning disorders, either specifically defined or generally defined, based upon the theory of symbolic integration of reality. It allows us to systematically control and measure the pattern of symbolic response, and to develop an individual profile of such response within a larger comparative framework that allows systematic intercorrelation with other individuals. Furthermore, it permits multi-dimensional analysis based upon intercorrelational measures that can be derived from a range of symbolic framing tasks. There is a sense that symbolic framing tasks can be therapeutic and rehabilitative, if performed in a consistent manner, as well as analytical and diagnostic.

Symbolic framing methodology rests upon the inter-correlation of multiple tasks and techniques, analyzed at multiple levels in terms of their response pattern, without being fit into any other interpretive framework (psychoanalysis, etc.). No single technique, nor any single set of tasks, is sufficient for the development of a symbolic framing profile of either an individual or some group of individuals. At least four or five levels of analysis can emerge from the coordination and inter-correlation of multiple tasks, as depicted below:

While all levels are elicited and analyzable on a well coordinated series of symbolic framing tasks, as for instance that achieved with the SFB (symbolic frame battery), previous research has dealt primarily with analysis of patterns at the upper two levels, and less with analysis of patterns at the lower two levels. Concern with adaptation of these methods in learning disabilities research and rehabilitation primarily involves the analysis and application of the lower two levels. Since all levels are simultaneously elicited and conflated in any given task, the upper levels must be sufficiently accounted for and thereby controlled if we are to work successfully with the lower levels. In other words, we must be able to take into account cultural or life-history variables of an individual's performance on a set of tasks, as for instance with English language learners on English based tasks, before we can hope to analytically separate and effectively deal with individual behavioral and psychological response patterns.

For purposes of analysis, it is expected that the four levels of performance listed above can be correlated with the overlapping levels of attributed analytical intercorrelation listed above, such that, in keeping with Ruth Benedicts basic propositions of cultural relativity of personality structure, that within a cross-cultural framework, normal behavioral patterning of level one should coincide with cross-cultural differentials and sub-cultural differentials above. Level 2 pattern associated with mild and general learning disability can be associated with individual and sub-cultural variation of pattern as noted above, while level 3 and level 4 type patterning can be expected to be associated with more marked and deviant patterns of individual and psychologically idiosyncratic patterns of response.

With presuppositions of cultural sharing and consensus, significant results on symbolic framing tasks and batteries can be obtained from a single classroom, and these results can be statistically generalized to larger populations if presumptions of typical profiles hold. In other words, if we took an average class that fit a certain profile, for instance the sixth grade class that I was observing that was 80% Hispanic, 12% mixed Asian and 8% male White, and primarily working to lower middle class, then these results would be generalizable to other sixth grade classrooms in Southern California, to the degree that these other classrooms approximated a similar profile, more or less. We might predict safely that the results would fall within an 80% range of most working/lower middle classes in the broader Southern California region, if these classes are 80% or more Hispanic in composition.

On the other hand, patterns of deviation of normal profiles, that would involve primarily the lower two levels of analysis, would be must less generalizable across larger populations as the degree of idiosyncratic variation would be greater and expected sharing less. Some commonly shared patterns, for instance key traits of AD/HD, might be generalizable based upon the analysis of a handful of cases, but we would expect in general to require much larger sample sizes in order to safely make any generalizations and predictions regarding patterns of response. On the other hand, there may be a saving consideration in this regard, as certain specific error patterns on different tasks frequently tend to be typical and shared though the overall profile of response may be idiosyncratic. Common and frequent error patterns may hide more than they reveal, especially if these errors are commonly made by "normal" as well as "abnormal" individuals, but they can also serve as broad indicators or clues pointing in the right direction. Again, it is the in the inter-correlation between different tasks, and especially between different kinds of tasks that share similar components, that the real strength of symbolic framing methods lies. Patterns of idiosyncratic deviation and error become diminished considerably at this level of analysis, if not simply conflated.

Whereas in the case of comparing cultural and sub-cultural/socio-grid differentials entails a presupposition of shared response pattern at a level of statistical significance, it can be safely assumed that pattern relating to learning disorder will be indicated in terms of correlations of patterns of error or poor performance on tasks. For instance, it can be predicted that for certain dyslexic type disorders, there will occur an unusual rate of circle-diamond inversions in the MPDT task or one of its variations, and that this will be correlated highly with low performance on testing the limits in pattern recognition tasks and in high scores of the rotating frame task. On the other hand, poor performance on the latter pattern recognition tasks and the rotating frame task may not be associated with such circle-diamond inversions, but rather with axial rotations which would be associated with either high stress-anxiety affecting neurological function or alternatively with some form of brain disorder or damage. Further correlations would be the lack of whole or part-whole response patterns to inkblot tasks and low-level associations and limited connections on basic things type tasks. Intermediate level disorder, which I would categorize as visual deficit or auditory deficit disorders, are indicated by high distortions and axial rotations on the MPDT as well as by the number of incomplete or open circle-diamond representations. Severe brain damage can expect to yield poor performance across the board on most tasks. Schizophrenic response pattern in part depends upon the current state of the informant and can entail a quite normal pattern, but possible indicators relate to organization of response and following directions consistently. Evidence with illiterates who appear otherwise normal in cognitive function reveal both poor performance on basic things and projective type tasks, and also a pattern of slow and strained response.

Short-term and working memory tasks were developed and tested in conjunction with other framing techniques, but these samples were not large enough to yield statistically useful results, nor was the protocol sufficiently refined to yield relatively unbiased results. Limited evidence does reveal that children who appear field-dependent and with neurological-behavioral (AD-HD equivalent, perform poorly on both short-term and working memory tasks. They perform poorly as well in pattern-recognition tasks as well as in the rotating frame task. In ethnosemantic elicitation tasks, these same individuals appear to block and depend upon external stimuli to complete the task.

Color tasks are interesting because they demonstrate an almost universal aversion to the color black among "normal" samples, and a similar near-universal appetite for one or more of the three primary colors or for some lighter secondary color. What is interesting in this regard is for those with neurological symptoms to strongly prefer black or other darker colors (brown or grey) and to push the primary or lighter colors to the end or the bottom of their selection trees that they construct. Color association appears to be independent of form or type or basic thing, but appear to be broad emotional indicators.

Overall, I've found variations of the MPDT task to be quite useful as a starting tool in visual based methods. The only problem that I've encountered with this technique is the conflation of pattern of response by relative levels of stress and emotion. In other words, poor performance, especially in terms of distortion of figures and rotation of axis, can be exacerbated or almost complete caused by temporary conditions of high anxiety that may be precipitated by the testing conditions themselves. But then, from the standpoint of trying to understand the relationship of these tasks to learning disabilities, stress and emotional distress can also interfere and play a part in otherwise normal or optimal learning performance.

The presuppositions underlying this proposed research strategy and methodological design are the following:

1. All human knowledge is both brain-based and socially constructed. Human reality may be said to be anthropologically relative.

2. The human brain appears to be functionally stratified upon basic levels, and this stratification to some extent appears to be progressive and hierarchical.

3. There is a form of symbolic and behavioral interdependency between the effective human environment and the adaptive functioning of the human brain (i.e., a brain out of its normal context is like a fish out of water).

4. The brain/body relationship upon which functional adaptation depends reflects a complex systematic neurologically/behavioral based integration that exists in a dynamic equilibrium

5. Normal patterns are those that exist within a given, socially defined range of adaptive variation, or deviance. Maladaptive patterns may arise as the result of a variety of complex causes or conditions.

More specifically, for symbolic framing methods, we may say that the phenomenological field is always attended to with the illusion of a steady stream of consciousness, but this illusion is itself a function of the brain that serves to smooth over inconsistencies, resolve contradictions, fill in gaps or holes in our normal field of awareness, and to superimpose a sense of order upon what might otherwise be only disorder. Essentially, the brain is capable of "repairing" gaps in the stream of perception and the continuum of conception, and this repair process appears to happen on different levels or stages in the feedback processing of information. The human being is continually eliciting information from the environment in an active manner and testing implicit propositions about its order and predictability--in an essential, instinctive sense of basic biological drives, human survival and adaptive success is at stake, and it can become in a sense a "life or death" issue. Symbolic transformation and displacement of experience is capable of distorting and unrealistically evaluating even relatively minor events or stimuli in the environment. The analogy of the moving film that we see as a steady stream or flow, rather than as a series of frames, is apt to how our conscious awareness works to make a fragmented and disjointed series of signal seem to us to be a meaningful and integrated stream of information.

The questions to be asked of symbolic framing methods are:

1. In what ways may symbolic framing techniques be employed and interpreted to reveal patterns of both normal brain-behavioral function and abnormal dysfunction.

2. How precisely diagnostic can such methods be made to be for any particular form of behavior or brain-based dysfunction.

3. Exactly how may these methods be made rehabilitative of dysfunction, and how much might such methods be relied upon, especially in conjunction with other educational and rehabilitative techniques.

Related to these questions are the unknown variables of the extent and possible ways or permutations that the brain may: 1. Rehabilitate itself; 2. Reorganize itself functionally; 3. Rewire itself in a manner as to optimize its sense of adaptive equilibrium. How may symbolic methods then be utilized in specific ways to reinforce or facilitate such adaptive brain function reorganization.

All human experience, whatever its form or function, wherever it occurs, has an intrinsic noetic component at its core, and this noetic component is by definition symbolic in structure. This structure appears to be unique to human beings on earth, and it has entailed in an evolutionary history the gradual symbolic transformation of human experience from latent, presymbolic forms to the fully symbolic style that we recognize as so characteristic of human beings today. It constitutes the foundation for the presupposition of the psychic unity and anthropological relativity of humankind. Many other animals today exhibit some characteristics of presymbolic consciousness and behavior, and some of these are remarkably humanlike.

Symbolic awareness and response pattern appears to emerge very early in the human infant, and its rudimentary forms can be observed in children 12 months old or even younger, and has already gained fundamental development by about the child's first attempts at a coherent language around 18 months of age. This consciousness rapidly progresses through the first five or six years of life at a phenomenal rate of development, such that by about six years old most of what it means to be human (perhaps more than 98%) in a symbolic and noetic sense has already achieved itself and mastery over its immediate environmental context, even if the physical body and subsequent mental development has yet a long ways to go.

The brain is so complex that what amount to minor perturbations can result in what appear to be major consequences for behavioral function and adaptation of the individual in society. It is that added 1 or 2 percent that seems to make a critical difference between a normal and adaptive brain and one that can be called effectively dysfunctional for one reason or another. And yet, injuries can occur to a much greater significant extent in the brain and what appear to be some facsimile of normal function can be maintained. Because the brain is a phenomenally complex and integrated organ, it exhibits a form of functional equilibrium so delicate that there have been as yet no terms to directly characterize its patterning in any empirically valid manner. As a complex system of relationships that extend throughout the body and beyond the body to effective environments and symbolically constructed life worlds, we cannot directly characterize its pattern or functional organization in any direct causal manner, but we must refer back to the achieved and maintained complementarity of relationships as our final form of explanation, and again, like Heisenbergian uncertainty, we are forced back upon forms of fundamental anthropological relativity.

The living brain has been and remains mostly a black box of infinite mystery to the natural sciences. It is a box that until recently we have not been able to look inside of except by means of the study of accidental aphasias. Newly refined techniques of magnetic resonance imaging has permitted us to watch internal activity of the brain in living subjects in a detail never previously witnessed, and yet the context of this activity and its microscopic resolution remains as yet severely limited.

Evidence suggests an unusual malleability of the human brain, and a sophistication of its neural processing networks that even allows a front-loading or fore-grounding of information processing, selection, repair and discrimination at a perceptual level even before information reaches the brain itself.

Symbolic framing methods are alleged to offer us but one more means of glimpsing into this black box, albeit in an inferential and indirect manner, but enough to allow us to at least make correlational predictions linking behavior, intention and brain pattern in a statistically consistent and logically coherent manner.

Without having accomplished any further application of symbolic framing methods, based upon previous experience of such methods, some general indicators of learning disability may be hypothetically predicted include a number of distinctive response patterns:

1. regressed, distorted and pathnomic figure drawings.

2. reversal of primary colors in color tasks with the "dark" colors (black and brown).

3. frequent rotations or inversions of pattern of figure on the MPDT

4. distortions of figures

5. axial rotations of figures

6. low performance on pattern recognition tasks and testing the limits of the MPDT

7. low performance on short-term and working memory tasks.

8. lack of whole and part-whole relationships in projective tasks

9. lack of improvement of performance over time on repetitive tasks

10. lack of indirect connection and super-order grouping in basic things tasks

11. preoccupation with part or detail in projective tasks, high rates of pathnomic response or alternative animal or plant responses.

12. marked fantasization or fantasy elaboration of thematic apperception tasks.

Learning disabilities: a heterogeneous group of disorders manifested by significant difficulties in the acquisition and use of listening, speaking, reading, writing, reasoning or mathematical abilities. These disorders are intrinsic to the individual and presumed to be due to central nervous system dysfunction. Even though a learning disability may occur concomitantly with other handicapping conditions (e.g. sensory impairment, mental retardation, social and emotional disturbance) or environmental influences (e.g., cultural differences, insufficient/inappropriate instructions, psycho-genic factors), it is not the direct result of these conditions or influences. (definition by the National Joint Committee on Learning Disabilities, 1981, as recited in Lelewer, 1994:159)

This definition is a useful starting point in understanding and trying to develop a coherent and systematic framework for understanding research relating to learning disabilities. First, it is evident that "learning disabilities" is a broad catch-all label that overlaps with and may relate to a range of other factors (i.e., loss of a perceptual modality, organic brain damage, hereditary or congenital brain abnormalities, or conditions of environment, society and culture) but is thought to also occur independently of these other mitigating factors. It is recognize that such disorders have some largely nonspecific relationship to central nervous system functioning and organization, though the exact nature of these relationships have yet to be precisely understood. Research appears to have been directed at understanding the broad class of learning disabilities in a more precise manner, by studying the condition as a standalone manner and also in terms of its relationship to other related conditions. Research has attempt to identify in a deterministic and predictive manner specific connections to nervous system function and organization. Based upon a very limited and cursory overview of the literature, I have identified the following framework of learning disabilities that are separable from other related conditions:

I consider this only to be a highly tentative and incomplete diagram. Important to understanding the processes of various forms of learning disability and their relationships to other forms of disorder are possibly any one or more of the following factors:

1. Lateralization, functional stratification, partitioning, competition and hierarchization of specific brain function

2. Sensori-motor and memory integration and organization of the central nervous system.

3. Disequilibrium and abnormal reinforcement/induction of brain-based neural activity.

4. Critical Gaps, Disjunctures or Deficits relating to naturally scheduled developmental sequences of neural integration.

5. Repressions and stress-related internalization/externalization of symbolic reference functioning.

6. Attentional inertia and form-constancy/frame dependency linked to embedding of discrepant and cross-cutting patterns of symbolic reinforcement.

It seems reasonable that some illnesses or disorders occur as compensatory or "corrective" mechanisms of the brain attempting to restore damaged or dysfunctional equilibrium, and that much subsequent "learning" may in a sense be inversely compensatory or "corrective" of these "ego-defense" kinds of mechanisms. Another relevant consideration may be the notion of "state-dependent behaviors," memory associations, skills and response patterning that may be critically tied to and dependent upon certain relative external states.

It strikes me that some symptoms of learning disabilities, associated with nervousness, lack of attentiveness, distraction, very low or very high thresholds of activation, impulsiveness, perseveration, some form of language and behavioral coordination dysfunction, are generalizable features across many kinds of learning disability profile, while other kinds of traits are more specific to a specific kind of disability.

What I have previously identified and defined as general learning disabilities is related to the clinical psychiatric category referred to as "minimal brain dysfunction". Children with MBD syndrome manifest normal dysfunction in one or more of the following areas: "motor activity an coordination; attention and cognitive function; impulse control; interpersonal relations; particulary dependence-independence and responsiveness to social influence; and emotionality." (Wender 1971: 12) It is apparent that children may vary over time in their symptoms and expression of this syndrome. I consider MBD syndrome as clinically defined and diagnosed to be virtually isomorphic with what I have previously referred to as "generalized learning disability" and Wender goes onto further elaborate the connection between MBD syndrome and academic performance:

"In any event, school underachievement is a hallmark of this syndrome. The etiological problem is compounded by the psychological consequences of early underachievement; a vicious cycle is produced in which poor performance generates criticism and a poor self-image, both of which tend to decrease motivation." (ibid., 16)

Though outward signs of distractability, inattentiveness and hyperactivity may appear to decrease with advancing age, the basic problems may remain in internally muted form as difficulty with concentration or sustained task peformance. "It is my impression that such individuals also manifest an absence of sustained interest in nonacademic areas: recrational activities, hobbies, jobs, initially attract the attention of these persons but (like the toys of childhood) fail to keep it." (ibid., 16)

"A substantial fraction of MBD children (from 1/2 to 2/3rds) manifest learning difficulties in school, and that among children with normal intelligence and with good school experience MBD is a very frequent source of academic difficulty. The most serious manifestation is difficulty in learning to read (although problems in writing--generally sloppiness-- and problems in comprehension and arithmetic may be present as well.)" (ibid. 16)

It is my opinion that differential diagnosis of general and special learning disabilities in school is the result of conflation of heterogeneous categories reflecting a lack of understanding of the real factors underlying alternative systems of classification of such disorders or a lack of sufficient diagnoses that may result in misdiagnosis. Thus, children with MBD syndrome can be misdiagnosed as dyslexic or as just "underachievers." At the same time, more severe organic issues like aphasia or epilepsy or mental retardation may mask or be conflated with symptoms of MBD syndrome. That there is broad but not complete overlap between differential diagnosis of MBD syndrome and generalized learning disability suggests that many children suffering milder forms of MBD may go undiagnosed, or may be able to successfully hide and develop coping strategies that allow them to participate more or less normally in a classroom context. This corroborates with my own field observations in normal classrooms, in which a substantial percentage of children with apparent symptoms of MBD syndrome slip through undiagnosed and untreated except when their behavior leads to disciplinary action. Emotionally, children with MBD syndrome tend to be "preditably unpredictable" and show four major types of dysfunction: increased lability, altered reactivity (either hyporeactive or hyperreactive), increased aggressiveness and dysphoria. "Reactivity to both internal and external stimuli is often altered and may take the form of either hyporeactivity or hyperreactivity: responses are normal in kind but abnormal in degree." These traits relate to an anthropological tendency of populations to vary in terms of hyposuggestibility and hypersuggestibility to external stimuli, suggesting that such children tend to fall at the extremes of the normal range, being either very hypersuggestive (prone to hypnotic trance) or hyposuggestive (insensitive to external stimuli or controls). This corresponds with the theory of symbolic frame dependency that interferes with and short-circuits normal modalities of cognitive functioning and symbolic integration of reality.

Such children exhibit generalized neurotic and dysphoric traits with marked anger without sadism toward animals or other children, anhedonia (inability to experience extremes of pleasure or pain), masked depression, low self-esteem and general anxiety. Such children usually appear to be "neurotic" in the sense of being defensively overconstricted and compuslive. Frustration and anger may be precipitated to failure to compulsive control unexpected or new situational demands, and there is a marked dependence upon the fixity of compulsion for dealing with change. This symptomology is similar to that of brain-damaged adults, without the exaggeration of the compulsiveness or of the reaction to alternation.

In social and interpersonal relations, such children are marked by abnormal independence, resistance to social demands, and extroversion, exhibited towards parents, parental surrogates or extensions, and peers. Such children appear impossible to enculturate or socialize, and are strongly resistant to forms of acculturative influence.

"In the area of external controls most MBD children are similarly described. They are perennial 2-year-olds. They are obstinate, stubborn, negativistic, bossy, disobedient, sassy and impervious. All disciplinary measures seem unsuccessful: rewards, deprivation of privileges, physical punishment....The manifestations of non-compliance change as the child grows older. During adolescence his noncompliance is apt to take the form of "passive-aggressiveness" or disengagement and ignoring of his parents. He does not oppose so much as he does not listen." (ibid., 20)

"Soft" clinical neurological symptoms of MBD syndrome may include poor fine motor coordination, impaired visual motor coordination, poor balance, clumsiness, strabismus, choreiform movements and "poor speech"(ibid., 27). They demonstrate these traits more frequently than normal control samples, and include "extra-ocular muscle dysfunction;
tremor, athetoid movements; dysdiadochokinesia; and Babinski sign. Such children are considered "neurologically" intact and it is important to emphasize that the syndrome can appear symptomatically without clear neurological signs or EEG abnormalities. There are associated physical stigmata with a minority of children with MBD syndrome similar to those described for shizophrenic children, including: anomalies of epicanthus and ears; high arched palate; short incurving fifth finger; single plamar crease; abnormally long third toe; syndactylism of the toes; strabismus; and possibly abnormal skull shape.

Psychological test performance appears ambiguous, especially on standardized intelligence tests. Perceptual and pattern-recognition task performance may be only variably affected by MBD syndrome:

"....the Bender-Gestalt Test and tests of figure-ground discrimination (visual and auditory) are often but not inevitably impaired. It is my impression that reversals are particularly common both in the reading and the writing of children with this syndrome. These reversals maybe another manifestation of the defect which is revealed in the rotation of figures on the Bender-Gestalt Test and problems with spatial (right-left) orientation."(ibid, 30).

Recall and memory function is often also impaired with MBD syndrome, with reports by teachers of almost total lack of retention of what is learned from day to day. "Sometimes the children's "forgetting" seems to reflect a genuine impairment in recall and neither a defect in acquisition (through inattention) nor a defensive inability to remember."(idid., 30)

Major phenomenological subvariants of MBD syndrome include:

1. classic hyperactive syndrome

2. the neurotic

3. psychopathic

4. schizophrenic

5. "special learning disorder"

"That the syndrome occurs in conjunction with--and possibly as the basis of--virtually all nosological categories of childhood behavior disturbances is embarrassing but true." That it is least commonly associated with neurotics indicates, especially introverted and repressed neurotics, indicates to me that neurosis is a kind of externalized adaptive control strategy that an individual may fall into in order to cope with basic discrepancies of personality on an on-going basis. Hyperactivity and "special learning disorders" appear to me to be partial and specific syndromes relating to MBD and generalized learning disorder, while the neurotic (including the phobic, hysterical, depressive and obsessive-compulsive), psychopathic (including a range of personality and impulse control disorders), and schizophrenic (including Paranoia) appear to me to be differential outcomes of the same basic complex.

"...It seems tenable that the heterogeneous group of diagnoses associated with the MBD syndrome might share a common biological basis."

...."The MBD syndrome is far more common in boys than in girls. Since it is later argued that the MBD syndrome is a forerunner or early manifestation of certain psychiatric disorders (e.g., shcizophrenia) of later life, some of which are not sex linked, its contribution to such pathology in females is problematic."

It is apparent that, if hyperactivity is not as strongly associated with girls as with boys, then girls exhibiting other symptoms of MBD syndrome, including distractibility, inattentiveness, anhedonic, and difficulty in discipline may slip by a diagnosis of suffering from MBD syndrome, only to have more severe psychiatric disorders appear later in life.

My interest in this reconnaissance has specifically come to focus upon the broad subcategory of learning disability that is known as dyslexia, as it is in this area that I believe symbolic framing methods may be the most usefully applied and efficacious in terms of development of new instructional methods. As with the broader category of learning disability, dyslexia appears to me to be a socially constructed category with both specific and non-specific attributes that have been associated with it. To culminate this digression, I will offer two clinical definitions concerning the category of dyslexia, or what was originally called "word blindness":

Specific Developmental Dyslexia: "A disorder manifested by difficulty in learning to read despite conventional instruction, adequate intelligence and socio-cultural opportunity. It is dependent upon fundamental cognitive disabilities which are frequently of constitutional origin."

Dyslexia: "A disorder in children who, despite conventional classrom experience, fail to attain the language skills of reading, writing and spelling commensurate with their intellectual abilites." (Critchley, 1972: 11, after the definitions by the Research Group on Developmental Dyslexia of the World Federation of Neurology, 1968)

Borrowing Anthony Gidden's term "structuration" I have adapted the notion of positive discipline to the cultivation and maintenance of what I would refer to as a proactive framework for structuring the context of performance and response patterning for children with learning disabilities in such a manner as to extinguish the primary and secondary gain from the neurotic, achievement of apperceptive realization and gestalt. Because childhood learning disabilities are believed to primary, basic and deep-seated. Because these deficits may be implicated at an early age with optimal phases and stages of acquisition and cognitive development, they may become relatively embedded in personality and therefore intractable to any subsequent remedial measures.

The learning disabled person is one whose life-situation demands extraordinary circumstances that are reduced and derivative of the normal framework, simplified, disamibiguated as much as possible, reduced to the most common set of denominators. The simplified modeling attendant to knowledge transmission and instruction in normal grades must be even further distilled for modeling in special education frameworks.

If the theory of pre-neurotic development underlying generalized learning disabilities, what is known clinically as minimal brain dysfunction is correct, then evidence of later differentiation of neurotic behavioral styles may be accounted for in terms of Alfred Adler's theory of positive discipline and the social goal orientation of children, especially in terms of the four mistaken goals of misdirected behavior--attention, power, revenge and assumed inadequacy. Feelings of inadequacy are assumed to be the base state, and are attendant upon poor performance in normal contexts. Social behavior become neurotic attempts to compensate for this inferiority complex, resulting in neurotic patterns that tend to exacerbate the basis of poor behavior in the first place. If feelings of inadequacy are linked to poor behavioral performance, then we can find at the root of such feelings of inadequacy the pre-neurotic symptomatology that is tied to minimal brain dysfunction and generalized or nonspecific learning disorders. The theory is that basic patterns of symbolic transference between the environmental relations and cognitive patterns becomes disturbed or neurotically destructive. Such patterns may be fundamentally unpredictable and inconsistent as reward structures. Basic perceptual and cognitive patterns are based upon implicit relations of trust and reliability of external pattern and process. This sense of trust has both an emotive and a connative association that is attached to it, and this forms the basis for the symbolic structuration of such patterning. For human beings, these relations are almost invariably socially mediated by significant reference or counter-reference others. Knowledge is a relationship that an individual maintains with the world, in particular, with ones adaptive environment. It is marked by a kind of understanding that may involve even feelings of aesthetic or ethical association or empathy. Patterns of abuse or neglect can undercut a child's sense of ego and self-esteem, and these patterns would be expected to result in the formation of some form of learning disability profile.

The challenges of learning (and therefore of systematic instruction) are fundamentally no different in quality or kind for the disabled learner than they are for the normal or supernormal learner. The mental apparatus that either kind of learner has to work with are in its basic structural and functional components the same. It follows that both sets of learner are along the same general road to knowledge acquisition and symbolic integration of experience, but that one set must work harder, and go more slowly, than the other set. Either way, in the long run, the road leads invariably across the same landscape and to the same sets of noetic topography.

There is substantial evidence of individual differences of neural patterning in different individuals, only part of which may be explainable as a function of heredity. Hence, in the examination of speech pathologies, for instance, it is known that some individuals have certain control over facial muscles that others do not, and that the nerves that grant this control may run from and to different locations in different individuals.

The symbolic framing framework (methodology, rationale, research design and the methods and applications so far developed within this framework) has demonstrated consistent significance and efficacy in multiple, cross-cultural contexts and settings. But these methods are far from refined and tend to be rather rough and general in their current state of development. Within Anthropology, symbolic framing methods have not been well received because of paradigmatic prejudices and resistance, and a general trend towards anti-relativistic orientations in theory and method. Within psychology, many of the traditional projective and analytic techniques methods upon which symbolic framing has been based, have fallen into disuse and discredit in lieu of an almost exclusive over-reliance on language-based inventories. From a critical perspective, this use of inventories, especially in the framework of school psychology, is held to be biased and complicated by linguistic and cultural variables that are not sufficiently accounted for by such tasks. Language based tasks in general have been found to be especially problematic in symbolic framing procedures. On the other hand, symbolic framing procedures are used within a different interpretive and theoretical-methodological framework from what the traditional projective techniques were designed and used for, namely Freudian style psycho-analysis. Symbolic framing techniques represent modifications of both the techniques and the analysis and interpretation of their results, eliminating most if not all of the concern over psycho-analytic jargon and pseudo-science. From the standpoint of Education, symbolic framing techniques have not yet been employed as such, as an integrated body of methods under a common theoretical framework, though many of the basic techniques have been used or relied upon in many different instances and contexts. It is felt in general that education and educators are bureaucratically over-controlled, and in general do not either see past or beyond the cultural constructions that serve to define their field in any one era, in any critical or independent manner. Therefore, education tends to be the victim of its own sense of ideological false-consciousness. Few educators are trained for genuine leadership or assuming independent initiative when it comes to promoting their own professional interests.

For symbolic framing methods to be successfully adapted to educational frameworks, a general understanding and context for their assessment and application potential must be gained. I believe it would require a certain commitment of resources at the state, the district and school level. I can imagine a district or school assessment center that is designed specifically for the continuing assessment of all students along these lines, and for the rehabilitation and training of exceptional students, broadly defined. Beyond this, I can imagine the production of a steady-stream of alternative instructional and curriculum materials and aides for instruction, as well as for alternative assessment kits that can be distributed more widely to different classrooms. Of course, as always, this is only in the best of possible school-worlds relatively free of contradiction and relatively unlimited in its resources.

On the other hand, I do not believe it to be realistic to expect that this level of resources should become available for the articulation of a single class or body of methods, however promising or efficacious they may be. It is important to bear in mind that research means little if it does not lead to constructive application in the real world. There is no single set of methods or body of techniques that provides a panacea for all forms of problems that may occur in any learning context. Any such methodology must be complemented by and augmented by a wide variety of peripheral methods and techniques at multiple levels in a manner that is nondestructive in any one or more areas of application. It became clear while testing my oral methods out in China that by themselves, alone, they were insufficient to the needs of the students in the acquisition of English, many of which needs could have been defined as situationally and relatively "exceptional" though not unusual in a context like contemporary China. To pursue such methods to the exclusion of the value of other approaches quickly leads to destructive consequences and to causing more harm than good. In this realization, the development of a broader range of applied behavioral strategies built around these methods proved much more constructive and productive than exclusive over-reliance.

If we think about our core values in educational instruction, which at least ideally should be identical in either special education or normal education frameworks, then it is not hard to realize that the golden rule applies to all learning--too much of anything is not good if not done in moderation and balance. All human behavior can be safely considered as "super-complex" from the standpoint of the wiring and function of the brain that controls and manages this behavior. No single or even coordinated set of deterministic approaches can succeed in lieu of adopting a genuine complementary and integrated system of learning. It should go without saying that we learn as we teach and we therefore teach as we learn.

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