"Your Health" brought up this topic to one of the specialists in this field, Dr. Nahla Ahmed Ayesh Dashash, Ph.D. of Communication Disorders, Clinical Merit Certificate from the American Society for Speech, Language and Hearing, Director of the Department of Speech and Language Pathology and Head of Training and Clinical Competence Programs at the Jeddah Center for Speech and Hearing. Beginning with the definition of specific learning disabilities according to the definition of the US Federal Act of 1977, which was established after the creation of the Right to Education Movement for All Handicapped Children in 1975, as:
Disturbance in one or more of the basic psychological processes related to the use of language, whether written or read, which is affected by the ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, dictate, or perform mathematical operations. This definition includes conditions such as sensory impairment, brain injury, mild brain function impairment, reading dyslexia and developmental aphasia. It does not include children with learning disorders that are primarily caused by impairments in vision, hearing, movement, mental retardation, emotional disturbances, or disabilities resulting from environmental or cultural differences or any disability resulting from near economic status.
Causes of learning difficulty
Research has indicated that learning difficulties may occur due to one of the following reasons:
Neurogenic.
Toxic chemicals that cause abnormalities and changes during pregnancy and after childbirth, such as if the mother has German measles or the mother consumes narcotic substances or medicines during pregnancy.
Hereditary.
Brain injury during childbirth.
Delayed development.
Genetic causes.
Sensory disturbances.
Unknown causes. Learning difficulties of linguistic origin
Learning disabilities of linguistic origin / specific learning difficulties have been defined by the American Association for Speech, Language and Hearing (ASHA) as a learning disability that is caused by a language disorder in both verbal and written terms. The child is diagnosed with a specific learning difficulty if the rate of language maturity of the child is about 12 months less than his chronological age in the absence of any sensory or mental disorders, developmental disorders, temporal defects or any imbalance in social and emotional behavior.
Specific learning difficulties may be associated with disturbances in some other skills such as motor skills, cognitive skills, attention and reading. The prevalence of specific learning difficulties in the United States is 7% among school children. Features of language problems
Features of language problems in children with learning disabilities of linguistic origin
Difficulty in vocabulary with linguistic significance, which is represented in several aspects such as a weakness in understanding the meanings of words, especially the abstract meanings of them, weakness in retrieving words, repeated use of the same words due to the limited vocabulary outcome, difficulty in retrieving the inverse.
Difficulty in understanding and using grammar correctly, which leads to the use of short phrases and the use of little vocabulary in the sentences, as well as errors in conjugating words
Difficulty in storytelling, which is represented by using a small number of events when they narrate the story, using general descriptions of the characters with little reference to describing their special states, such as their feelings such as fear, anger and surprise.
Difficulty in using language correctly represented in several aspects such as the inability to stay on the topic at the center of the conversation, the inability to express in the body language "for example" facial features, the inability to correct errors that occur during dialogue, lack of understanding of the general idea of the topic such as stories or The lectures.
Difficulty in reading and understanding what is being read. Reading and understanding what is being read requires sequential and interrelated processes of psycholinguistic analysis, and any defect in any stage of these processes results in a disturbance in reading. These difficulties are represented in the weakness of translating the letters because of the linguistic sounds they represent, the retrieval of the definition of the vocabulary from the memory, as well as the weakness in the ability to link information about the vocabulary with linguistic significance and the grammatical information to represent it in sentences, and then link these sentences to understand the text as a whole.
Difficulty writing
Difficulty writing, including the following
Impaired productivity, which is represented by using fewer words and phrases for writing assignments.
Weakness in the structure of the text, which is represented by the lack of consistency and organization of the text, deficiencies in the introduction to the text, the conclusion of the text and the conclusion, the failure to use the auxiliary means that link the text, such as (the use of pronouns and adverbs related to time).
A weakness in the syntax of sentences, and is represented by little use of grammatically complex sentences that contain errors of deletion and substitution and compatibility of syntax, increased use of conjunctions "and", and incorrect use of other conjunctions such as (if, because, since).
Weakness in spelling and control of writing words, which is represented by many errors in spelling and writing words in a wrong way (spelling errors), many non-phonetic errors (not related to the way the word is issued), phonemic misspellings such as «to / you», spelling errors. Sounds like "Abern / Rabbit."
Weakness in the use of vocabulary, which is represented in the repeated use of vocabulary, so there is no diversity in its use.
Weakness in the font, which is represented by poorly formed letters, disproportionate spaces between letters, confusion between naskh and patches, errors in the use of vowelization.
