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The present study aims to assess the influence of academic anxiety on self-esteem of learning disabled children. The total sample for the present study consisted of 80 learning disabled children. The sample was selected from remedial centres/ schools with remedial services in Ludhiana, Chandigarh, and Khanna. Only those children were selected who belonged to intact families and had been formally diagnosed as learning disabled by a certified psychologist or remedial educationist and had been taking remediation for a period of at least 6 months. Cooper smith Inventories (School Form) by Cooper smith (1981) was used to assess self-esteem of learning disabled children. Academic Anxiety Scale by Singh and Gupta (2009) was used to assess levels of academic anxiety among children. Results reflected that children with learning disability were found to be academically either highly anxious or less anxious. The learning disabled children who were having high self-esteem were found to have low academic anxiety in contrast to children having medium self-esteem.
Keywords: self-esteem, learning disabled children and academic anxiety
Learning disability is a disorder in one or more of the fundamental psychological processes involved in comprehension or in using language, spoken or written, that may evident itself in the imperfect ability to take notes, think, articulate, read, put pen to paper, spell or do numerical estimations, including conditions such as perceptual disabilities, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia, and developmental aphasia. Learning disability excludes visual, hearing or motor disabilities or mental retardation, emotional disturbance or environmental, cultural or economic disadvantage that result in learning problems (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 2004). Brain's ability to obtain, process, accumulate and react to information is affected due to neurological disorder in children with learning disability (Clauss, 2010).
When a child's academic performance or behaviour is not up to the mark, it becomes a cause of concern for parents and professionals. They spend a great deal of time and energy in helping the child so that they can improve upon the two areas. Unfortunately, a domain of equal significance, self-esteem is often overlooked. Child's selfesteem plays a very important role and has direct and indirect influence on his/her life. If a child is struggling to learn, there is a great demand to strive for the goal of maximizing...