Learning Disabilities: A Neurodevelopmental Puzzle

Definitions

Learning Disabilities, defined in the Disabilities Education Act, is a severe discrepancy between intellectual ability and achievement in listening, thinking, speaking, reading, writing, or mathematics. Learning Disabilities are presumably caused by central nervous system dysfunction, with no actual sensory loss such as blindness or deafness.

Prevalence

Recent estimates indicate approximately 15 percent of all Americans have a learning disability. Some leaders in the field feel that everyone has some disability in attention, memory, organization, motor function, or communication skill, and that every one underachieves in specific areas at some times.

Related Concerns

Research indicates that learning disabilities may result in emotional and social difficulties (such as lowered self-esteem, depression, frustration, anger). Studies abound relating juvenile delinquency to untreated learning disabilities, and welfare rolls reflect a high percentage of individuals with learning disabilities. Sometimes, with individuals who are used to remedial support, their frustration, depression, and anger escalate when the support is removed. Learning Disabilities may present together with other conditions such as Attention Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder, Tourette’s Syndrome, etc.

Conventional Educational Approach

Generally educators have tried to treat Learning Disabilities through various methods of remedial education and additional exposure to the material perhaps enabling the learning disabled student to function with certain materials in specific situations. However, since the underlying problems of the central nervous system dysfunction still exist, this lengthy and expensive process may not yield long-term effects. Independent learning and flexible, resilient functioning rarely result until the root problem is treated.

The HANDLE Perspective

Each Learning Disability and each individual have unique aspects. Yet, observable patterns of dysfunction in subsystems required to support learning provide guidance in how to resolve the disability by enhancing brain function. Crucial observations for each individual include (1) what distracts attention from the task at hand, (2) what requires energy needed for comprehension, (3) what physical/environmental changes affect the learning, and (4) what learning modalities are most successful. We determine such factors as (1) distractions due to tactile, or auditory hypersensitivity, (2) vestibular inadequacy to support muscle tone, visual tracking and linguistic/phonetic awareness simultaneously, (3) irregular interhemispheric integration interfering with auditory-visual integration, parts-to-whole configuration, etc., (4) light sensitivity and visual-motor dysfunctions that cause irregular visual/visual-motor feedback, etc.

Individualized Treatment Programs

With this information we can design an appropriate program to strengthen the weak functions and resolve the learning difficulties at their roots. Most people then learn in an accelerated fashion with little or no need for tutoring.

Who Can Be Helped?

Those learning disabilities in children and adults treated by the HANDLE approach with a notably high success rate include: Dyslexia (reading, comprehension, spelling, written expression), Dysgraphia ( writing), Dyscalculia (mathematics), Specific Language Delays and Dysfunctions.

The mother of a 16 year old comments: 

“We brought our daughter to HANDLE because we were concerned with her lack of organizational skills, her reading and some motor skills problems. When reading aloud, she lost her place and seemed not to pay attention to the text. Everything she did was in slow motion: she spoke slowly, she moved slowly.

All of that is changing, and in only two months. Her reading problem is gone. She moves and talks faster. Her grades have all come up (she is getting A’s and B’s).”--S. Hatch

M. Howell, educator with 19 years experience, used HANDLE activities in her middle school special education classroom:  “Administrators and other teachers saw remarkable growth in students who had ‘plateaue’ or who had shown no growth for years. The changes were academic, social and behavioral.”