Psychological and educational evaluations designed to assesslearning disabilities and possible learning disabilities use acyber...
Input Disabilities
The central brain process is called perception; a person mighthave a visual perception disability or an auditory perceptiondisability. Visual perception disabilities might be in distinguishingsubtle differences in shapes. For example: misperceiving dand b,or pand qor 6 and 9. One may have difficulty with visual figure -ground tasks, that is not be able to focus on the relevant stimulusin the field of vision. Some children have trouble with visual depthperception; they may fall off chairs or bump into things. Auditoryperception disabilities might be in the area of distinguishing subtledifferences in sounds, leading to misunderstanding of what isbeing said. In English language there are 44 units of sounds calledphonemes. Some words sound similar such as hair and air, balland bell. Some children might have difficulty with auditory figure-ground, confusing what sounds to listen to when there is more than one source. Some children cannot process sound inputsquickly. They appear to have to think about what is heard beforeunderstanding what is said. This is called auditory lag. Theyappear to be lost or confused when too much is said and mayappear to be pre-occupied. Such children always seem to bemisunderstanding what is being said.
Integration Disabilities
At least three steps are needed to understand what is recordedin the brain. The individual stimuli must be sequenced correctlyand then understood in the context used (abstraction) and thenorganized with all other stimuli into a concept. One can have anintegrative disability in each of the areas of sequencing, abstractionor organization. The disability might be for visual or auditoryinputs. Sequencing disabilities can result in confusing inputs e.g.,writing 21 rather than 12, reading was rather than saw. Suchchildren can memorize the months of the year but be unable tosay what comes after any month without starting with Januaryand working their way up. Abstraction difficulties result in troublepicking up the subtle meanings of words. They might miss themeanings of jokes, puns, or idioms. Organization disabilities canresult in difficulty pulling multiple parts of information into a full orcomplete concept. Such children can learn individual facts butmay not be able to integrate them into a full concept. They showthis in other aspects of life as their room may be disorganized,organizing time or making plans might be difficult.Memory Disabilities
Children with learning disabilities usually have excellent long-term memory. They can retain information once stored. Theymight have difficulty, however, in short-term memory, the abilityto concentrate on information and store it. They might learninformation well by attending to it (spelling list, math concept etc.)yet they will not retain this information once they stop attending
Some children with learning disabilities will have troublecoordinating the use of large muscle groups, i.e., gross motordisability. They will be clumsy or having difficulties with activitieslike running, climbing, swimming. Others may have difficultycoordinating small muscle groups, i.e., fine motor disability. Theywill be having poor handwriting, difficulty with written languagetasks as spelling, spacing and punctuation.
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