The Basic Definition of a Learning Disability/Disorder

Learning disabilities (LDs) are one of the most common problems in children in education today. According to a study done in 2007 by researchers Altarac and Saroha, roughly 10% of children in the United States suffers from a learning disability of some kind. Since this is a problem that affects so many of our children, it is important that we know what it is and how to help with it. A lot of educational research is done on LDs, what they actually are, what causes them, and ways to help children with LDs. Over the course of the next few weeks, I'll give a brief (very brief) overview of each of these areas in the upcoming days, but today, I'm going to start with a general definition of learning disabilities.


The official definition, as stated by the US government, is that a learning disability is: A disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written, that may manifest itself in an imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or to do mathematical calculations, including conditions such as perceptual disabilities, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia, and developmental aphasia. 


Alright... Now that that overly technical definition is over, I'll break it down so it's easier to understand.


First Part: A disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes. A disorder is used in this instance to mean something that is out of the norm - something that causes the person experiencing it a significant amount of difficulty functioning in academic setting. Basically, it's a disconnect betweenthe information the child is supposed to be learning and the parts of the brain that receive, process, or retrieve information. 


Second Part:  involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written, that may manifest itself in an imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or to do mathematical calculations. This basically states that kids with learning disabilities have an "imperfect" ability to perform basic school activities. By using the word "imperfect", they are saying that students are not unable to learn - just that they may have significantly more difficulty with learning than their classmates. The LD may show up in a variety of ways - children may have difficulty understanding things they've heard, may need more time to process information than their peers, have trouble speaking, etc.


Third Part:  including conditions such as perceptual disabilities, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia, and developmental aphasia. Ok, this one is a little more complicated. The "including conditions" portion is pretty straightforward, but the rest of it is a little less understandable, so I'll break it down condition by condition. 

• Perceptual Disabilities - Perceptual disabilities concern the way a child takes information in. They can occur in a variety of areas - sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste, balance. The important thing to remember is that the disability has nothing to do with how well they may see, hear, etc. - they may have perfect vision or hearing, and still have a perceptual disability in that area. It's how they perceive or understand what they see/hear/smell/etc. that causes the problem. 
• Brain Injury - This one is much simpler - any kind of brain injury that results in thinking, learning, etc. being harder is considered a learning disability or disorder.
• Minimal Brain Dysfunction - This is an outdated term for ADHD. 
• Dyslexia - This is a reading disability that is affected by how the brain recognizes and processes symbols. It's not just letters and numbers scrambling themselves - it comes in a lot of different forms, and isn't always easily recognized. It makes it much more difficult for children (or adults) to read quickly, or to understand what they read.
• Developmental Aphasia - Very similar to dyslexia - in fact, dyslexia is a form of Developmental Aphasia. An "aphasia" is a language impairment. It's specifically a deficiency in speech that isn't normal for their age. This can include a child's ability to retrieve words (finding the words they want), their ability to express themselves, to put words into sentences, inserting words where they don't belong... there are a lot of ways this can show up in a child. 

Ok... that was a lot of information in a very small space. I promise that the next post will be much shorter and hopefully less full of jargon. If you have any questions, please please please leave me a comment! 

References: 

Altarac, M. & Saroha, E. (2007). Lifetime prevalence of learning disability among US children. Pediatrics, 119(1), 77 - 83.

American Psychiatric Association. (2000). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (4th ed, text rev.). Washington, DC: Author.

Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (2011). Federal definition/criteria for specific learning disabilities.  Retrieved from http://dpi.wi.gov/sped/ldcriter.html. 

Hello and welcome to my blog! My name is Abbey, and I'm 25 years old. I'm currently working on a year-long internship in school psychology. I intend this blog to document my experiences, provide parents, teachers and other school psychologists with resources I find that may be useful to them, and give easy-to-understand explanations, tips, and interventions. I will try to post at least twice a week, and I'm open to questions and suggestions about information anyone might want. For my first few posts, at least, I'll be focusing on learning disabilities, trying to give an overview of each learning disability, as well as a few interventions that have been shown to work with that disability.