Introduction: Learning disorder is a psychological pattern associated with students which --despite their normal appearance and intelligence-- have problems in acquiring skills such as reading, writing, comprehension, and arithmetic calculations. The motivation behind this work is to better understand the capabilities of students with learning disorder; such understanding is crucial for designing tailored curriculums for these students. Objective: The main goal of this research is to compare the capabilities of students with learning disorder with those of normal students using three well-known measures: reaction time, attention problem, and short-term memory. Methods: This study had a subject population of 80 male elementary-school students in Sanandaj, Iran. Half of these subjects (40 students) were selected by a multi-step sampling from normal schools and the other half (40 students) were chosen randomly from dedicated exceptional students schools. All subjects underwent three sets of tests:1) Reaction Time Test; (both simple and choice variants) using a reaction time measurement machine; 2) The Stroop Test; and 3) the Wechsler Subscale Numerical Memory Test. Data were analyzed using three methods: descriptive statistics, Student’s t-Testfor independent samples, and effect size. Results: Based on the results of data analysis, statistically significant differences were found between the two groups with respect to short-term memory (t=15.27 , p≤0.0001 , d=3.54), attention problem (t=-2.11 , p≤0.0001 , d=-0.47), choice reaction time(t=-5.104 , p≤0.0001 , d=-1٫15), and simple reaction time(t=-5.264 , p≤0.0001 , d=-1.17). Conclusions: In summary, we observed that students with learning disorder differ significantly from normal students in their reaction time, attention, and short-term memory capabilities.
