From another prospective – learning disabilities
I’ve received a fair amount of feedback from last month’s articles about individual disabilities. In particular, a number of more specific questions about learning disabilities along with a special surgical intervention to, hopefully, correct hearing impairments were addressed. Accordingly, we’ll provide some additional information about learning disabilities this week and next week, while finishing the last two weeks of the year with a more detailed discussion about cochlear implants to help those dealing with hearing impairments to possibly hear better.
We’ll start with learning disabilities today. Learning disabilities are problems that affect the brain’s ability to receive, process, analyze, and/or store information. These problems can make it difficult for a student to learn as quickly as someone who isn’t affected by learning disabilities. There are many kinds of learning disabilities. Most students affected by learning disabilities have more than one kind.
Certain kinds of learning disabilities can interfere with a person’s ability to concentrate or focus and can cause someone’s mind to wander too much. Other learning disabilities can make it difficult for a student to read, write, spell, or solve math problems. Current studies suggest that nearly four million school-age children and teens have learning disabilities, and at least 20 percent of them have a type of disorder that makes it difficult to focus.
Most learning disabilities fall into one of two categories: verbal and nonverbal.
People with verbal learning disabilities have difficulty with words, both spoken and written. The most common and best-known verbal learning disability is dyslexia, which causes people to have trouble recognizing or processing letters and the sounds associated with them. For this reason, people with dyslexia have trouble with reading and writing tasks or assignments.
Some people with verbal learning disabilities may be able to read or write just fine but they have trouble with other aspects of language. For example, they may be able to sound out a sentence or paragraph perfectly, making them good readers, but they can’t relate to the words in ways that will allow them to make sense of what they’re reading (such as forming a picture of a thing or situation). And some people have trouble with the act of writing as their brains struggle to control the many things that go into it – from moving their hand to form letter shapes to remembering the correct grammar rules involved in writing down a sentence.
People with nonverbal learning disabilities may have difficulty processing what they see. They may have trouble making sense of visual details like numbers on a blackboard. Someone with a nonverbal learning disability may confuse the plus sign with the sign for division, for example. Some abstract concepts like fractions may be difficult to master for people with nonverbal learning disabilities.
A behavioral condition called Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is often associated with learning disabilities because people with ADHD may also have a hard time focusing enough to learn and study. Students with ADHD are often easily distracted and have trouble concentrating. They may also be excessively active or have trouble controlling their impulses.
No one’s exactly sure what causes learning disabilities. But researchers do have some theories as to why they develop. They include:
Genetic Influences. Experts have noticed that learning disabilities tend to run in families and they think that heredity may play a role. However, researchers are still debating whether learning disabilities are, in fact, genetic, or if they show up in families because kids learn and model what their parents do.
Brain Development. Some experts think that learning disabilities can be traced to brain development, both before and after birth. For this reason, problems such as low birth weight, lack of oxygen, or premature birth may have something to do with learning disabilities. Young children who receive head injuries may also be at risk of developing learning disabilities.
Environmental Impacts. Infants and young children are susceptible to environmental toxins (poisons). For example, you may have heard how lead (which may be found in some old homes in the form of lead paint or lead water pipes) is sometimes thought to contribute to learning disabilities. Poor nutrition early in life may also lead to learning disabilities later in life.
Next week, we’ll discuss some of the ways in which people with learning disabilities can live better and cope with such disabilities. Stay tuned.
Paul Rendine is Chair of the Disability Advocates of Delmarva, Inc. group. He can be contacted at his email address at quoteman3@aol.com with any comments or questions.