Health and Psychology

A lot of students are entering into summer with the prospect of hoping that tutoring may help them perform better in school.  There is an idea that additional study will improve reading, spelling, math, attention, memory, or organization skills.  Unfortunately for the 15 to 20% of students with learning disorders, or the 10 to 15% of students with acquired neurological disorders, additional time spent studying may not result in any additional improvement in learning.

The term "learning disabilities" includes a variety of disorders that affect the ability to learn. Some examples include (but are not limited to):

Reading Disability is a reading and language-based learning disability, also commonly called dyslexia. For most children with learning disabilities receiving special education services, the primary area of difficulty is reading.

People with reading disabilities often have problems recognizing words that they already know. They may also be poor spellers and may have problems with decoding skills. Other symptoms may include trouble with handwriting and problems understanding what they read. About 15 percent to 20 percent of people in the United States have a language-based disability, and of those, most have dyslexia.

Dyscalculia is a learning disability related to math. Those with dyscalculia may have difficulty understanding math concepts and solving even simple math problems.  They may have problems setting up a math problem or keeping track of math processes.

Dysgraphia is a learning disability related to handwriting. People with this condition may have problems forming letters as they write or may have trouble writing within a defined space.

Information-processing disorders are learning disorders related to a person’s ability to use the information that they take in through their senses – seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and touching. These problems are not related to an inability to see or hear. Instead, the conditions affect the way the brain recognizes, responds to, retrieves, and stores sensory information.

Language-related learning disorders are problems that interfere with age-appropriate communication, including speaking, listening, reading, spelling, and writing.

Hearing related learning disorders are problems related to processing sounds.  Some people have hyperacusis (also spelled hyperacousis). This condition is characterized by an over-sensitivity to certain frequency ranges of sound (a collapsed tolerance to normal environmental sound). A person with severe hyperacusis has difficulty tolerating everyday sounds, some of which may seem unpleasantly loud to that person but not to others.

It can be acquired as a result of damage sustained to the hearing apparatus, or inner ear. There is speculation that the efferent portion of the auditory nerve (olivocochlear bundle) has been affected (efferent meaning fibers that originate in the brain which serve to regulate sounds). This theory suggests that the efferent fibers of the auditory nerve are selectively damaged, while the hair cells that allow the hearing of pure tones in an audiometric evaluation remain intact. In cases not involving aural trauma to the inner ear, hyperacusis can also be acquired as a result of damage to the brain or the neurological system. In these cases, hyperacusis can be defined as a cerebral processing problem specific to how the brain perceives sound. In rare cases, hyperacusis may be caused by a vestibular disorder. This type of hyperacusis, called vestibular hyperacusis, is caused by the brain perceiving certain sounds as motion input as well as auditory input.

Organizational disorders are problems relating to the parts of the brain used to plan, organize and prioritize information.  These are also known as disorders of executive function.  These disorders include attentional problems.  These include the ability to initiate or start a task, the ability to stop a task, the ability to persist on a task without being distracted and the ability to change smoothly from one task to another.  Attention Deficit Disorders are a subset of these disorders. 

Tutoring can help to improve skills when the skill hasn't been taught or learned by the student.  In other cases, the student needs to have changes made to the process of learning to be able to learn.  These changes are known as accommodations.  In some cases accommodations are required in order to learn.  In other cases, accommodations are required in order to test for acquired knowledge.

Psychological and neuropsychological evaluations can provide specific information on types of accommodations that can be used to miprove learning or test scores.  For some people difficulties only surface when testing is of a longer duration.  In these cases it is important to be able to document the impact of the effects of duration on learning or test scores and then to note accommodations needed to offset these effects. 

Psychoeducational testing can provide for evaluation of some types of disabilities and accommodations.  It can also assist in documenting response to intervention of the impact of accommodation. 

Often the school system can provide for assessment of learning problems.  In other cases, students can be evaluated independently.  If you are struggling in school, or are having problems at work on on tests feel free to contact me to schedule an evaluation.