Reading Disabilities in Children and Adults. Backround Information

Reading Disabilities in Children and Adults

Traditionally , the term learning disabilities ' has been used to refer to problems acquiring academic knowledge and skills that are caused by disorders in basic psychological processes that , in turn , are caused by dysfunction of the central nervous system . In the case of specific learning disabilities , these processing weaknesses are thought to have a strictly limited impact on cognitive development they impede the acquisition of certain academic skills while leaving many other cognitive abilities to develop normally . This conceptualization is meant to differentiate children with specific

learning disabilities from those who have learning problems in school for other reasons . The idea that the processing disabilities have a relatively narrow impact on cognitive development differentiates children with specific learning disabilities from those who have the kind of general learning weaknesses associated with mental retardation . The idea that the processing limitations are intrinsic , or constitutionally based , differentiates children with learning disabilities from children who have learning difficulties in school resulting from lack of opportunity or motivation to learn

Changing procedures for the classification of children with learning disabilities in the manner suggested in this paper would have several clear consequences for the field of learning disabilities as an educational /social /political movement . First , the children identified for learning disabilities services in the school would become more heterogeneous with regard to level of general intelligence . This would require a more differentiated approach to the provision of accommodations than is presently the case , in which children often can receive accommodations simply because of the their status as learning disabled . Second , children identified as at risk for learning disabilities ' on the basis of their performance on process /outcome measures would also be more likely to come from minority ethnic groups and homes of lower socio-economic status . This would occur simply because children from these kinds of pre-school environments often enter school less well prepared on the critical markers , or predictors for various learning outcomes . Finally , unless service delivery capacity was substantially increased , many children now receiving learning disabilities services would no longer receive them . For example , a child with mild reading difficulties that are significantly discrepant from IQ can qualify for learning disabilities services under current IQ-discrepancy procedures . However , if absolute level of process /outcome scores or reading scores were used to identify children as reading disabled , the same child might not qualify because his /her scores would not be low enough . In order to serve all children who do not have another primary disability , but whose learning difficulties in specific academic areas were severe enough to interfere with their ability to accomplish grade level work there is no question that special instructional capacity for children with learning disabilities would need to be expanded

In conclusion , this study demonstrated the utility of using multiple reading-age--matched groups to examine variations in the development of reading subskills in children with RD . Results support the hypothesis that children with RD develop lexicons that are asymmetrical with respect to word-specific representations and subword orthographic-phonological...