Research has typically addressed a specific emotional component of having a Learning Disability (LD), and thus has failed to capture the complete picture of what it is like to experience a LD. The current study asked university students to describe without any prompts or cues how it feels to have a LD, both retrospectively in high school and currently in university. We were interested in seeing how individuals with LDs describe their LD experience in their own words through free association. Information was collected from eight different cohorts throughout the past 11 years who were enrolled in a course on LDs for students diagnosed with LDs. All descriptors were coded into 17 different theme categories and further sorted by valence into positive, neutral, and negative categories. Participants reported more negative descriptors than positive ones, which interacted with the context in which they were reported. More negative descriptors were reported in high school compared to university and more positive descriptors were reported in university than high school. We failed to find any differences in emotional valence across the different cohorts. Latent class analyses revealed that reports of high school experiences consisted of two different LD profiles: extremely negative and negative. University experiences consisted of three different LD profiles: predominately positive, mixed emotional valence, and predominately negative. These results suggest that the experience of a LD can improve in university but that approximately 23% continue to find having LD a highly negative experience even though they are receiving support. / Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council: Joseph-Armand Bombardier CGS Master’s Scholarship

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The thesis focuses on social and psychological situation in a family with a child with combined disabilities, starting with the birth of the child and following reactions of the parents, family and society to this new situation. The thesis deals with different problems in the area of decision making in further possible steps concerning the child care and also with the way how to deal with given problems. The aim is to point to the parents who have a child with combined disability and to illustrate their situation from the beginning, showing how they cope with the situation. The practical part contains a research which is based on the questionnaire filled in by parents who have a child with combined disability. The questionnaire focuses above all on the parents, their situation and the change of their lives after the birth of their child, partnership, environment, help and other organizations that frequent the parents and their children.