“Early Detection of Learning Disabilities – The Situation Today”.
Lalitha Ramanujan
Alpha to Omega Learning Centre
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Early Intervention benefits :
• The child
• The family
• The society
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• Some children differ in their pattern of development in
• Language • Thinking skills• Social skills• Behaviors and motor abilities• These later often fall under the
“ at risk or high risk category”.
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Prevention is better than cure
Who & Why?
• A percentage who do not receive
adequate stimulation or find learning
to accomplish daily life activities or
pre-skills for academics, difficult.
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Issues in identification
• Individuals differ in their developmental
patterns.
• Help or not help the at risk child.
• Labeling has more disadvantages than
advantages.
• The biological and environmental factors
that influence the development. 5
Areas
• Pre academic readiness• Intelligence • Language • Perceptual• Motor • Social-emotional • Physical-sensory
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• The focus is on what is, not there in the
child’s content and also improve his
cognitive function.
• The aim is to create a foundation for
further learning and develop cognitive,
social, and specific skills that are
prerequisites for school work.
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• “At risk or high risk category”
often land as learning disabled in
higher grades in school.
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• “Prevention is better than cure”.
• The question is if the detection is
early, is the cure cent percent?
• Why should we have early
intervention?
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Skills needed to rule out LD.
• Basic concepts
• Adaptive behaviors for daily living
• Primary cognitive behaviors
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Basic concepts
• Color• Shape• Size• Orientation in space and related concepts• Number and quantity• Time• Cause and effect relationships• Feelings and moods• The human body
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Adaptive behaviours for daily living
• Motor skills • Dressing• Personal grooming and physical self-care• Eating and table manners• Independence and helping in-home
activities• General knowledge about the immediately
experienced world
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Primary cognitive behaviours
Attending to stimuli
Focusing
Imitative behavior
Symbolic play
Question and answer responses
Initiatory\adaptive play.
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The four stages of emerging cognitive function – Prof. Reuven Feuerstein
1. Lack of function
2. Function is there – but not expressed,
3. The child has the function but it is expressed in a deficit manner-emerging
4. Function present – he can remember – but fragile when complexity increases and varies day to day.
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Early Intervention benefits are
• Improves intelligence• Brings in developmental enhancement in
physical, cognitive, language, social and self esteem
• Prevents secondary learning problems• Removes family stress and anxiety• Creates an enriched environment to
promote independency and self concept.
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The current need of the day
• The young child should be placed in the
natural setting to be with his peers.
• Individualized teaching plan to meet the
needs of the child
• Assessment should be carried out informally
and in the natural environments
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The Need
• Have child initiated activities.
• Ample opportunities to know about
the child’s interest, motivation and
his preference for activities.
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Our focus - to reduce the gap
Activities to enhance• Motor development – gross and fine motor,
body activities
• Auditory processing – listening to sounds, auditory discrimination, memory
• Visual processing – perception, memory
• Tactile processing18
• Teach the parent the skills to prevent any gaps in development.
• Train the mediating adult the skills to enhance cognitive skills.
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Perceptual Modality
• - shows that all of us have different ways to learn.
• “If they cannot learn the way we teach, can we teach the way they learn?”
Kathleen Hickey
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• The mediation is the one that
helps to develop the
flexibility and plasticity for
adaptation to change.
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• What makes the innate and acquired schemata flexible, plastic and modifiable?
• It is the human environment interaction.
• The answer is
Mediated Learning Experience
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The mediator’s role ---
• select • organize • set a schedule • be aware of when and in what amount to
change the frequency, saliency and amplitude.
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The mediator’s goal
• Focus attention• Make transcendence• Activate and enhance prior knowledge• Bring in a cognitive change
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Mediated Learning Experience
is the vitamin
for cognitive development.
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Who will benefit?
1. Children or those who need to develop or
improve in the basic content and concepts
to function effectively in their learning
environment.
2. Prevent or overcome at risk factors
3. Establish those functions which the child
missed due to lack of appropriate
mediation.
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Targets
Learners who need • development and or acceleration
• Prevent dysfunction or any delay
• Restore or establish functions that are not acquired at the right time.
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• Current trend ---
LD is on a rampage in recognition.
• The cause can be exogenous –
environment
• or endogenous – with the child.28
Didactic
Cog. Map
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• It can also be due to:• Culture• Societal values on intelligence and its
functions• Acceptance by parents• Commitment• Parents role in mediation
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Causes• Child lacks exposure from family and
culture• Result from psychological or and
emotional disturbance• The effect of the above inadequacies
could be: ENVIRONMENTAL DETERMINANTS
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• Immigration.
• Poverty
• Ideology
• Parent child relationship—
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Endogenous condition
• Autism \ ASD• Constitutional factors – hypo or hyper• Down syndrome• Emotional disorders
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• MLE is open – age, stage of
development should not be an
issue.
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• Rich get rich Poor get poorer
• Belief - modifiability Restricted
environment
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