Thesis:

Studying the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral therapy on learning disorders and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in elementary school students in Juvein County in 2024-2025

The present study was conducted with two objectives: to determine the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral therapy on learning problems of students with learning disabilities and to determine the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral therapy on hyperactivity symptoms of students with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. This semi-experimental study was conducted with a pre-test-post-test design with two experimental groups and two controls. The statistical population of the study also included two groups of students with two separate disorders (learning disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) in elementary school in the city of Jovin in the academic year 2024-2025. The study sample consisted of 60 students, 30 of whom were diagnosed with learning disorders and 30 others with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The sampling method was convenience sampling and the subjects were randomly divided into four groups of 15 people each, including two experimental groups (learning disorder group and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder group) and two control groups. The research tools included the Colorado Learning Difficulties Questionnaire (2011) for the learning disorder group, and the Swanson et al. (1980) Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder Symptom Questionnaire for the ADHD group. Both experimental groups underwent 12 90-minute sessions of cognitive behavioral therapy based on the Saffron et al. (2017) package, and the control groups did not receive any intervention. The post-test was completed again for all groups, and univariate analysis of covariance was used to analyze the data. The results showed that cognitive behavioral therapy was not effective on the learning difficulties of students with learning disabilities and caused a significant decrease in the scores of the experimental group, compared to the uncontrolled group (P‹0.001). It also showed that cognitive behavioral therapy was not effective on the hyperactivity symptoms of students with ADHD and caused a significant decrease in the scores of the experimental group, compared to the uncontrolled group (P‹0.001). Accordingly, it can be concluded that cognitive behavioral therapy is not an appropriate approach to address the underlying problems of learning disabilities and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and is not recommended.

Keywords: Cognitive-behavioral therapy, learning disability, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder