Learning Disabilities - Psychological Assessment

Early identification

• Visual-perceptual problems: difficulty distinguishing shapes and sizes difficulty coloring, writing, cutting out lack of established “handedness” – uses either right or left hand to perform a task letter and word reversal
• Attention/memory problems: difficulty concentrating, does not listen well, forgets easily, cannot follow instructions with many steps
• Language deficits: delay in language development, has difficulty forming sentences and/ or finding the right words
• Reading problems: has trouble sounding out words, has difficulty understanding words or concepts misread letters or puts them in incorrect order.

Distinguishing learning disabilities from other disorders

It is not surprising that the symptoms describing a child with learning disabilities sound similar to those of a child with ADD. All ADD children have learning disabilities, but not all learning disabilities, but not all learning disabled children have ADD.

Children with various medical and genetic diseases may also have leaning problems. Girls with Turner’s or X 0 syndrome, have severe visual-perceptual problem (Alexander & mony, 1985). Children suffering from chronic illness such as diabetes, arthritis and kidney or liver disease may have poor school performance either because of the disease itself or from psychosocial problems related to the chronic illness. Also, children with psychiatric disorders often fail in school.

The influence of a child environment is an important as his or her physical and emotional health. For example a child who is having and has poor nutrition cannot pay attention and does not learn well. Also, if the child comes from a home that does not emphasize learning, he or she will rarely achieve well in school (Bell, Abrahamson &Mc Rae, 1977).

Thus, before performing a battery of psychological and educational tests on a child who is having trouble learning, a complete medical and social history should be taken. Questions to the parents might include: is your child hyperactive? Does your child receive any medication that might affect his or her learning? Does he or she have any emotional problems? Does your child seem afraid to go to school? Does he or she avoid going to school, sometimes using sickness as an excuse? Is there any problem with vision or hearing, either now or in the past? Do you suspect that any recent changes in your home may have upset your child? Are you having problems with you child other that in school?

Evaluating the learning disabled child

Treatment involves evaluation and diagnosis as well as program planning. Using a group of psychological and educational tests, one initially assesses the cognitive, visual-perceptual, and psycholinguistic strength and weakness of the child as well as his or her level of achievement in different academic areas. This leads to a strategy for treatment. Most children are not tested until they have completed kindergarten

Cognitive and other tests: two commonly used cognitive or IQ tests are the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R) and the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC).

The WISC-R the WISC-R contains both tests of language abilities and performance testes of eye-hand skills that require minimal verbal response. It is divided into six verbal and six performance subtests, none of which requires reading or spelling. These subtests consist of a series of increasingly difficult questions ranging from a 6 to 16 years old level. On each the child is asked to perform up to the level at which he or she consistently fails. Each subtest is then scored, which 10 being an average score. Thus it is possible to determine a child’s strengths and weakness by examining the results of the subtests. A variation of this test, used for children 4.6 years of age and older, is called the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence (WPPSI)

The verbal subtests include: information, comprehension, arithmetic, similarities, vocabulary and digit span (digit span is an optional test)

The second category, the performance subtests, includes: picture completion, picture arrangement, block design, object assembly, coding and mazes (mazes is an optional)

K-ABC: the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children is a new psychometric measure designed to test children from 2.6 to 12.6 years of age. It differs from the WISC in that it minimizes the role of language and verbal skills in testing. In addition, this test is particularly useful for testing children with learning disabilities because it covers and evaluates different aspects of reading skills. Using this test, one is able to ascertain not only whether a person has a reading disability but also which type of reading disability. Thus, the dysphonetic reader can be distinguished from the dyseidetic reader.

Besides the use of cognitive tests, other tests are used to assess a child’s intellectual abilities. These include tests of visual-perceptual skills, psycholinguistic abilities, and academic achievement tests.