What Are Learning Disorders?

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Del curso dictado por University of Colorado System

Managing ADHD, Autism, Learning Disabilities, and Concussion in School

4 calificaciones

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University of Colorado System

Managing ADHD, Autism, Learning Disabilities, and Concussion in School

4 calificaciones

Curso 2 de 4 en SpecializationSchool Health for Children and Adolescents

Welcome to our next course in the School Health specialization: Managing ADHD, Autism, Learning Disabilities, and Concussion in School. In this course, you will about the most common developmental and behavioral disorders affecting children such as ADHD, autism spectrum disorder, learning disorders, and concussions. We will focus on how schools can support children by recognizing common symptoms and understanding the diagnosis process. You’ll be introduced to scenarios that provide firsthand clinician experience working with children with ADHD. We will walk through management options for the most common developmental and behavioral disorders. Next, we’ll go through two interview modules that discuss autism and learning disorders. Finally, we’ll discuss what concussions are, symptoms, and management Prepare yourself to learn about the most common development and behavioral disorders affecting children.

De la lección

Learning Disabilities

In the next few lessons, you’ll learn about learning disorders and disabilities among children. You’ll experience an interview and answer dialogue with Dr. Caitlin Walsh, a Psychologist at the University of Colorado. You will be introduced to diagnostic criteria for learning disorders and disabilities. Next, you’ll learn how a diagnosis is made and by whom. Next, you’ll explore specific types of learning disorders in children.

What Are Learning Disorders?4:07

Conoce a los instructores

Eve Kutchman
Strategist, Exercise Psychologist
Child Health Advocacy Institute and Lifestyle Medicine
Lauren Welch
Pediatric Resident Physician
Department of Pediatrics
Karen Hecker
Nurse Consultant, Clinical Nurse III
School Health and Child Health Advocacy Institute
Daniel Nicklas
Assistant Professor, Director of Primary Care Education for the Pediatrics Residency, Co-medical Director for the Pediatric Call Center
Department of Pediatrics

Hi. I'm Dr. Dan Nicholas back with you again.

For the next module and series of videos,

our guest is Dr. Caitlin Walsh,

a psychologist at the University of Colorado,

and she will be talking about learning disabilities.

Caitlin. First, tell us a little about what learning disabilities are.

So learning disability are a group of diagnoses that impact reading, math,

writing, organization, listening comprehension,

and the overall processing of information.

For the general purposes of my discussion,

I will be referencing how we diagnose learning disabilities in

the United States but everything we talk

about should be relevant to other countries as well.

About 2-10 percent of the population in

the United States has a learning disorder and among those,

reading disorders are the most common.

Studies have shown that learning disorders impact girls and boys equally.

But boys may be referred for evaluations more often than girls.

In the US, many children receive

academic support for these disabilities as they go through school.

In fact, children are often identified as having a learning disability once

they start school and have begun to show difficulties in certain academic areas.

Symptoms can be mild to severe and children can

present with varying presentations which we will talk about later.

Many learning disabilities overlap and tend to occur together

with other diagnoses like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Interesting. Why is it the boys are referred for more evaluations than girls?

This may be because boys tend to display

more behavior problems which could be associated with learning or other challenges.

Behavior problems are the number one reason that children are referred for evaluations.

However, there tends to be other underlying causes of

these behaviors such as learning or language challenges.

What are the first signs of a learning disorder?

Children may have delays in other areas of developments,

such as language delays or fine motor skill delays.

They may learn to speak later than average or have

delays with other motor skills like running,

jumping or riding a bike.

Once they start school,

children may then begin to show difficulties learning the alphabet,

learning numbers, rhyming, recognizing letters,

or remembering the days of the week.

Some children with learning challenges can also

begin to show social or behavioral difficulties.

This is thought to occur because these children are having

general challenges keeping up with their peers.

That's great information.

What are the underlying causes of learning disorders?

There is not one cause of learning disorders

and it's important to remember that most of the times,

it is very difficult to pinpoint

a specific underlying reason why someone might have a learning disorder.

There are multiple genetic and environmental risk factors

that combine to produce a specific disorder.

There are also neurobiological and cognitive factors that impact learning.

For example, there are multiple cognitive processes

that may be impaired in reading and math disorders,

such as retrieval of symbolic information,

working memory, attention, and cognitive control.

There's no single factor that results in developing a disorder,

rather it is the combination of these factors that

makes it more likely for a disorder to occur.

Learning disorders are also highly heritable.

Meaning, if a parent has a learning challenge,

it is more likely for that child to have a learning challenge.

Other examples of risk factors include exposure to drugs or alcohol in utero,

poor maternal nutrition, or poor prenatal healthcare, and premature birth.

There are also other diagnoses that frequently occur together with learning disorders,

such as ADHD and language disorders.

So, if a child has another neurodevelopmental conditions,

such as ADHD or language disorder,

they are much more likely to be diagnosed with a learning disorder.

In our next video, we will further discuss

the specific criteria used to make a diagnosis of a learning disorder.

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