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.