nadpis

  2. DEFINING LEARNING DISABILITIES
  9. MOTOR COORDINATION DEFICITS
  10. ATTENTION DEFICIT DISORDER
  11. SOURCES AND LITERATURE

5. ASSESSMENT OF LEARNING DISABILITIES

The assessment of children with learning difficulties is organized in counselling centres. It is done by a team of professionals including a special education teacher, psychologist and on request/when necessary other professionals (neurologist, phoniatrist, etc.). The first part of the assessment is an interview with parents as well as the child itself during which the professional tries to finds out about family and child’s life course. Second part is formed by specialized achievement tests focusing on intelligence and the level of reading, comprehension, writing, visual and auditory perception, spatial orientation and laterality .

Symptoms of Learning Disabilities

It has already been mentioned that LD is a very heterogeneous group of characteristics. Children identified with LD do not display all the characteristics at one time. Several or many of the characteristics (see table 1), however, appear at some point of their development. The combination of symptoms and seriousness of impact differs in each individual depending on a number of factors and personal characteristics.

Memory

short-term memory, distraction, anxiety

Cognition

prone to repeat errors, difficulties to discriminate and understand main idea, difficulty generalizing previously learned information

Attention

easily distracted by noise or visual stimulation, trouble listening to a lecture and taking notes, short-term memory, impulsive

Social Skills

impulsive, impaired self-concept, low assertiveness, avoidance, gets angry easily, difficulty with accepting criticism, Has trouble recognizing nonverbal cues such as facial expression or body language

Motor skills

appears clumsy and poorly coordinated, has poor motor control resulting in a range of difficulties including controlling a pen leading to untidy handwriting with many crossings out

Reading

omits or adds words when reading, confuses/reverses some letters ('b' and 'd', etc.) or words ('was' and 'saw', etc.) and numbers ('41' to '14)

Writing

poor handwriting, slow, errors in spelling, punctuation, poor legibility, not able to take notes

Mathematics

problems with oral calculations, multiple steps

Psychological processing

misinterprets subtleties in language - tone of voice – sarcasm, figurative language (metaphor, simile), difficulties organizing information, temper, impulsiveness, avoidance, particularly susceptible to stress which may be associated with deadlines or examinations

Directions

trouble understanding, remembering and following directions, confuses left and right, gets lost, difficulty with clarification and organisation

Organisation of work

needs more time to complete tasks than other students, repeatedly forgets things, loses things, often late for class, cannot sense time, difficulties organizing information, ineffective ways of learning, limited store of background knowledge to academic activities

Table 1: Symptoms of learning difficulties

Personality of Persons with Learning Difficulties

Learning disabilities significantly influence academic as well as social and emotional abilities of a person. The academic issues are dealt with in sub-chapters below. Therefore, the following lines will focus on social and emotional development of persons with LD.

One of the most typical conditions arising form LD isfrustration. The sources of frustration are experience with school failure and inability to fulfil expectations of others. If the frustration or depression occurs often, persons with LD might react with anger or agression. Another important issue is social relationships. Students with LD are physically immature, they have problems in orientation and communication, as a result of this their behaviour is often inadequate. Furthermore, their ability to learn from failures is limited and their work pace and results are changeable.

The self-esteem of a child with LD is influenced by specific development of personality of persons with LD, but also by the child’s environment and its attitude. Therefore, it is important to praise effort and build self-respect of these children.

Behaviour difficulties often accompany learning difficulties. Two types of causes have been identified:

  • Primary – as one of the symptoms of the minimal brain damage (mainly attention disorder, infantile behaviour, high excitability),
  • Secondary – as a result of continuous experience of failure , negative feedback from adults and as an „expression of helplessness“.

Some of the problems persist in adult age as well and influence the process of education, work, motivation and social relationships.