Learning Disabilities
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Overview: Learning disabilities
A learning disability is not an intellectual disability. A learning disability is a disability that affects a person’s ability to process information. People with learning disabilities possess an average to above-average IQ. Learning disorders range in severity and interfere with the acquisition and use of one or more of the following important skills:
- Oral language (e.g., listening, speaking, understanding)
- Reading (e.g., decoding, comprehension)
- Written language (e.g., spelling, written expression)
- Mathematics (e.g., computation, problem solving)
- Organization (e.g., planning, follow-through)
- Social Skills (e.g., social perception and interaction)
“Specific learning disability means a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written, which may manifest itself in an imperfect ability to listen, speak, read, spell or to do mathematical calculations.
The term includes such conditions as perceptual handicaps, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia and developmental aphasia.
Dyslexia

Dyslexia is probably the number one learning disorder. It’s a condition that makes it challenging to understand text or speech. If you have dyslexia, reading, writing, and speaking can be difficult and overwhelming.
Symptoms :
- Reversing the position of letters
- Struggling with reading comprehension load
- Delayed speech
- Difficulty learning auditory processing disorder new vocabulary or rhymes
- Having disorders visual processing may have trouble understanding directions
Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

(ADHD) Many children with ADHD are disciplined for misbehaving, but they can’t control their actions. ADHD makes it difficult to concentrate, which can lead to one child distracting others around them in a classroom setting.
Symptoms:
- Unable to sit still
- Being disorganized or forgetful
- Difficulty staying quiet and attentive
- Lack of motivation
- Mood swings or emotional outbursts
Dyscalculia

Dyscalculia is more severe because it’s diagnosing a learning disability that makes it challenging to understand even the most basic math concepts. Since math builds upon itself, children with dyscalculia can fall behind and struggle to catch up for years.
Symptoms:
- Struggling with concepts such as measuring, time, and estimating
- Being unsure of how to approach word math problems
- Difficulty following the order of operations
- Finding it challenging to count and group numbers together
Dysgraphia

Dysgraphia is an affect learning disability that makes it hard to write legibly. Some people with dysgraphia struggle spoken language to hold a writing utensil comfortably while others lack the spatial awareness needed to produce legible text.
Symptoms :
- Messy handwriting
- Taking a long time to write
- Holding a writing utensil improperly
- Struggling to express thoughts in a clear sentence structure
- Poor grammar
- Speaking out loud while writing
Dyspraxia

Although dyspraxia is a condition that affects someone’s motor skills, it still has the potential to hinder affect specific learning.
The reason why is because a person with dyspraxia may not be able to hold a pencil or participate by speaking regularly.
Dyspraxia mostly interferes with hand-eye coordination skills. Dyspraxia presents itself differently in each affects a person, but some symptoms include poor balance and struggling with fine-motor tasks.
Auditory Processing Disorders

Auditory processing disorders are disorders that may cause a person to struggle with distinguishing similar sounds, as well as other difficulties.
Visual Processing Disorders

Visual processing disorders are disorders that cause people to struggle with seeing the differences between similar letters, number, objects, colors, shapes and patterns. Just like auditory processing disorders.
Non-verbal Learning Disorders

Non-verbal learning disabilities (NLD), or non-verbal learning disorders , are neurological syndromes that develop in the right side of the brain. People with NLD have a very strong verbal ability, remarkable memory and spelling skills, and strong auditory retention; although they possess poor social skills and have difficulty understanding facial expression and body language. Many do not react well to change and some possess poor social judgement. Some people with NLD have poor co-ordination, balance problems and difficulty with fine motor skills.
Causes
Experts say that there is no single, specific cause for learning disabilities. However, there are some factors that could cause a learning disability:
Heredity: It is observed that a child, whose parents have had a learning disability, is likely to develop the same disorder.
Illness during and after birth: An illness or injury during or after birth may cause learning disabilities. Other possible factors could be drug or alcohol consumption during pregnancy, physical trauma, poor growth in the uterus, low birth weight, and premature or prolonged labor.
Stress during infancy: A stressful incident after birth such as high fever, head injury, or poor nutrition.
Environment: Increased exposure to toxins such as lead (in paint, ceramics, toys, etc.)
Comorbidity: Children with learning disabilities are at a higher-than-average risk for attention problems or disruptive behavior disorders. Up to 25 percent of children with reading disorder also have ADHD. Conversely, it is estimated that between 15 and 30 percent of children diagnosed with ADHD have a learning disorder.
Signs And Symptoms
In the normal physiological development, the child is expected to acquire a certain set of basic cognition and motor skills. Any significant delay or gap in this development could be a sign of learning disability. A series of well-researched and proven tests and assessments have to be conducted before diagnosing the condition.

Preschool:
The child may have some of these difficulties in preschool.
Developing speaking skills at normal age (15-18 months) when speech typically develops in children
- Pronouncing simple words
- Recognizing letters and words
- Learning numbers, rhymes or songs
- Concentrating on tasks
- Following rules and directions
- Using fine/gross motor skills to do physical tasks.
Primary School:
The child may have difficulty in:
- Connecting letters and sounds
- Differentiating between similar sounding words or rhyming words
- Reading, spelling, or writing accurately
- Distinguishing right from left, for example, confusing 25 with 52, “b” with “d,” “on” with “no,” “s” with “5”
- Recognizing letters of the alphabet
- Using correct mathematical symbols for doing maths problems
- Remembering numbers or facts
- Learning new skills; the child may be slower than other children of his or her age
- Memorizing poems or answers
- Understanding the concept of time
- Hand-to-eye coordination, being unable to gauge the distance or speed, thus leading to accidents
- Tasks involving fine motor skills: holding pencil, tying shoe lace, buttoning shirt and so on
- Keeping track of own possessions like stationery items


Middle School:
The child may have difficulty in:
- Spelling similar words (sea/see, week/weak), usage of prefixes, suffixes
- Reading aloud, writing assignments, solving word problems in maths (the child may avoid doing tasks involving these skills)
- Handwriting (child may grip the pencil tightly)
- Memorizing or recalling facts
- Understanding body language and facial expressions
- Showing appropriate emotional reactions in a learning environment (the child may behave in an aggressive or rebellious way, and react with an excess of emotion)
High School:
The child may have difficulty in:
- Spelling words accurately (the child may write the same word with different spellings in a single writing assignment)
- Reading and writing tasks
- Summarizing, paraphrasing, answering application problems or questions in tests
- Poor memory
- Adjusting to new surroundings
- Understanding abstract concepts
- Focusing consistently: the child may lack concentration on some tasks, while focusing excessively on others

Treatment
LD is identified after a series of tests conducted by a team of specialists. The following specialists may work together to help diagnose and treat a child’s LD.
- LD is identified after a series of tests conducted by a team of specialists. The following specialists may work together to help diagnose and treat a child’s LD.
- Clinical Psychologist: Preferably a psychologist with a specialization in education. The Clinical Psychologist conducts specific intelligence test (such as Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children test) to determine whether the child’s intellectual functioning is normal. This helps to exclude borderline intellectual functioning and mild mental retardation, both of which may affect academic performance.
- Special Educatorassesses the child’s academic achievement by administering standard educational tests to assess the child’s performance in areas like reading, spelling, written language, and mathematics. An academic achievement of two years below the child’s actual school grade or chronological age may indicate that the child has a specific learning disability.
- Counselor helps in understanding behavior, checks for any behavioral issues, and for any problems that may exist due to poor home or school environment, or any emotional problems that may be the reason for the child’s poor performance at school.
- Psychiatrist: Checks if there are symptoms of ADHD because it may coexist with any type of learning disability. The psychiatrist also checks for other disorders which may be the cause for poor academic performance.
