Psychology in Educational Management (EM 713) Report

LEARNING DISORDER/ LEARNING

DISABILITY

“The disabilities you can see may be easier to deal

with than the ones you can’t”

Definition

Learning disorders in a child or adolescent are characterized by academic underachievement in reading, written expression, or mathematics in comparison with the overall intellectual ability of the child.

DefinitionLearning Disabilities- a type of Cognitive Disabilities

-A disorder in one or more of the basic psychological process involved in understanding or using language, spoken or written, which may manifest itself in an imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell or to do mathematical calculations.

History

• Rutter and Yule (1975)– Poor readers with low IQ had more

global neurodevelopmentalabnormalities, but better acquisition of reading and spelling than children with average ability language but with delays in language and speech

Prevalence

• The overall prevalence of LD is estimated to be between 2 and 10%– Approximately 5% of children

have identified LD in public schools

Gender Differences

• Boys>Girls

• Among those with LD:– Females generally have a lower

IQ, and perform more poorly in math and reading, better in writing

– Males tend to perform better in math

Two Specific Conditions to be considered Learning Disabled

1. When provided with appropriate learning experiences, the student fails to achieve at a level commensurate with his/her age or ability level in one or more of the following: oral expression, listening comprehension, written expression, basic reading skill, reading comprehension, mathematics calculation, or mathematics reasoning.

2. The student has a severe discrepancy between achievement and intellectual ability in the stated areas that is not due to visual, hearing or motor handicap, mental retardation, emotional disturbance or environmental, cultural or economic disadvantage.

Associated Features

• Social skills, demoralization, low self-esteem

• Dropout rate as high as 40%

• Conduct

• Attention

• Internalizing symptoms

• Important predictors of classroom failure

Associated Features

• More likely to be rejected, on-task behavior, off-task behavior, conduct disorders, distractibility, and shy/withdrawn behavior

• 8-39% comorbidity with ADHD

Genetics

•Pennington, 1995–40% of LD children have LD parents

–40% of their siblings are LD

The most recent revised version of the DSM-IV (DSM-IV-TR) includes

four diagnostic categories

• reading disorder,

• mathematics disorder,

• disorder of written expression,

• learning disorder not otherwise specified.

Reading Disorder• 75 percent of children and adolescents

with learning disorders have reading disorders

• Defined as reading achievement below the expected level for a child's age, education, and intelligence, with the impairment interfering significantly with academic success or the daily activities that involve reading.

Characteristics

• an impaired ability to recognize words,

• slow and inaccurate reading,

• poor comprehension

• children with ADHD are at high risk for reading disorder

• The term Developmental alexia was accepted and defined as a developmental deficit in the recognition of printed symbols.

• Dyslexia was used extensively for many years to describe a reading disability syndrome that often included speech and language deficits and right-left confusion.

Epidemiology (Pattern of Disease Development)

• 4 percent of school-age children in the United States have reading disorder

• Three to four times as many boys as girls are reported to have reading disability

Comorbidity (Appearance of Multiple Illnesses)

• 25 percent of children with reading disorder also have ADHD.

• Family studies indicate, ADHD and reading disorder may be genetically transmitted together.

• Children with reading disorders have higher than average rates of depression on self-report measures and experience higher levels of anxiety symptoms than children without learning disorders.

Etiology (Study of Causes)

• most accurately described as a neurobiological disorder with a genetic origin.

• Children with reading disorders are slower than average in naming letters and numbers, even when controlling for IQ.

• Given that reading disorder is essentially a language deficit, the left brain has been hypothesized to be the anatomical site of the dysfunction.

Etiology (Study of Causes)

• the ability to identify single words has been linked to chromosome 15.

• Impairment in reading spelling has now been linked to chromosomes 1, 2, 3, 6, 15, and 18.

• The first myth is that reading disorders are primarily caused by visual-motor problems, or what has been termed scotopic sensitivity syndrome.

Etiology (Study of Causes)

• Complications during pregnancy and prenatal and perinatal difficulties are common in the histories of children with reading disorder.

• Extremely low birthweight and severely premature children are at higher risk.

• Recent evidence suggests that certain peptides, such as those derived from activity-dependent neurotrophic factor-12, may mitigate alcohol-induced fetal death and developmental learning disabilities.

Clinical Features

• identified by the age of 7 years (second grade).

• Children with reading disorder make many errors in their oral reading.

• The errors are characterized by omissions, additions, and distortions of words.

• Children have difficulty in distinguishing between printed letter characters and sizes, especially those that differ only in spatial orientation and length of line.

Clinical Features

• Associated problems include language difficulties, exhibited often as impaired sound discrimination and difficulty in sequencing words properly.

• Older children tend to be angry and depressed and exhibit poor self-esteem.

Treatment• focus a child's attention to the

connections between speech sounds and spelling.

• Improvements were noted on measures of reading accuracy, reading comprehension, reading efficiency, passage reading fluency, and spelling.

• After individual letter-sound associations have been mastered, remediation can target larger components of reading such as syllables and words.

• individual education program (IEP)

Mathematics Disorder

• have difficulty learning and remembering numerals, cannot remember basic facts about numbers, and are slow and inaccurate in computation.

• Poor achievement in four groups of skills have been identified in mathematics disorder:

1) linguistic skills 2) perceptual skills 3) mathematical skills 4) attentional skills

• A variety of terms over the years, including dyscalculia, congenital arithmetic disorder, acalculia, Gerstmann syndrome, and developmental arithmetic disorder have been used to denote the difficulties present in mathematics disorder.

Epidemiology

• 1 of every 5 children with learning disorder have mathematics disorders

• 6 percent of school-age children have some difficulty with mathematics

• Mathematics disorder may occur with greater frequency in girls

Comorbidity

• commonly found comorbid with reading disorder and disorder of written expression.

• mathematics disorder may also be at higher risk for expressive language disorder, mixed receptive-expressive language disorder, and developmental coordination disorder.

Etiology• partly caused by genetic factors.

• neurological deficit in the right cerebral hemisphere, particularly in the occipital lobe areas.

• the cause is thought to be

• multifactorial,

• maturational,

• cognitive,

• emotional,

• educational, and

• socioeconomic factors

Diagnosis• a child's skills in mathematics fall

significantly below what is expected.• Conceptual skills involve recognition of

mathematical symbols and being able to use mathematical signs and line up numbers correctly

• A definitive diagnosis can be made only after a child takes an individually administered standardized arithmetic test and scores markedly below the level expected

Treatment• teaching mathematics concepts with

continuous practice in solving math problems.

• Flash cards, workbooks, and computer games can be a viable part of this treatment.

• Project MATH, a multimedia self-instructional or group-instructional in-service training program, has been successful

Disorder of Written Expression

• the most complex skill acquired to convey an understanding of language and to express thoughts and ideas.

• the most complex skill acquired to convey an understanding of language and to express thoughts and ideas.

• Spelling mistakes are most often phonetic errors

Disorder of Written Expression

• Historically, dysgraphia (i.e., poor writing skills) was considered to be a form of reading disorder.

• Evidence indicates that disorder of written expression can occur.

Comorbidity• Children with writing disorder are at

higher risk.

• mathematics disorder, and expressive and receptive language disorders can occur.

• ADHD occurs with greater frequency in children with writing disorders than in the general population.

Etiology

• a deficit in the use of the components of language related to letter sounds.

• the combined effects of one or more of the following:

»expressive language disorder,

»mixed receptive-expressive language disorder,

»reading disorder.

Diagnosis

• based on a child's poor performance on composing written text

• addition to spelling mistakes, a child with writing disorder may have serious grammatical mistakes, such as using incorrect tenses, forgetting words in sentences, and placing words in the wrong order.

• child may have poor ability to remember which words begin with capital letters.

Treatment

• direct practice in spelling and sentence writing.

• review of grammatical rules.

• Intensive and continuous administration of individually tailored.

• one-on-one expressive and creative writing therapy.

Learning Disorder Not Otherwise Specified

• This category is for disorders in learning that do not meet criteria for any specific learning disorder.

• This category might include problems in all three areas (reading, mathematics, written expression) that together significantly interfere with academic achievement even though performance on tests measuring each individual skill is not substantially below that expected given the person's chronological age, measured intelligence, and age-appropriate education.

SUMMARYLearning Disability/Learning Disorder refers

to…..- "a neurobiological disorder in which aperson's brain works or is structureddifferently.“ (CCLD)

- “disorders in reading, mathematics,and written expression” (DSM-IV)

- " a disorder in one or more of thebasic psychological processes involvedin understanding or using spoken orwritten language.“ (IDEA)

SUMMARYWhat a Learning Disability is not…..

• attention deficit hyperactivity disorder(ADHD) and learning disabilities often occurat the same time, but they're not the same.

•mental retardation, autism, hearing or visualimpairment, physical disabilities, emotionaldisorders, or the normal process of learning asecond language.

•caused by lack of educational opportunities,such as frequent changes of schools, poorschool attendance, or lack of instruction inbasic skills.

SUMMARYWhat should you look for?

Most kids struggle with a specific subject

while others have trouble relating to a

certain style of teaching. Sometimes learning

disabilities are blamed on lack of motivation,

immaturity, or behavior problems. But if your

child has significant ongoing problems with

the "3 R's" — basic skills of reading, writing,

and arithmetic — then he/she may have a

learning disability.

“The disabilities you can see may be easier to deal

with than the ones you can’t”

Suggestions on Dealing with Persons with Learning Disabilities

1.Always remember the major purpose or objective of the learning disabled's effort.

2.Be sure to you don’t expect the individual to perform beyond his capacity.

3.Realize that working in the area of disability is frustrating.

Suggestions on Dealing with Persons with Learning Disabilities

4. Try another way. See if you can find a different method of teaching the skill, one that might be simpler or easier for the learning disabled individual.

5. Try to figure out what strategies the learning disabled individual is using to learn or perform.

Thank you!!!