Types Of Learning Disabilities
Learn about Types of Learning Disabilities. Learning disabilities hamper the memorizing, analyzing, speaking, calculating or other skills, thus disabling a person from learning, acquiring, understanding or reproducing information, especially from the academic point of view. These disabilities, not to be confused with disorders, last as long as life and adversely affect a person’s life. Most importantly, learning disorders are not related to a person’s own intelligence, hence we see several great men in history who were diagnosed with learning disabilities but have accomplished remarkable feats. Learning disabilities essentially affect the workings of four stages of learning and acquisition, that is, input, output, assimilation and storage. Thus the types of learning disabilities may be broadly classified into the fields of spoken, written, reasoning/analysis and mathematical conceptualization.
Typically, there are seven main types of learning disabilities.
Dyslexia, the reading disorder
This disability is accounted for the types of learning disabilities that affect the reading stage of the information processing. The sufferer faces difficulty in identifying alphabetical symbols from written texts. What is read is difficult to be decoded and as a result, the patient feels light-headed, confused and suddenly blank. He/she reads slow and no matter how hard he/she works, they will not be able to memorize or reproduce the spelling correctly. As a result, the patient reads very slowly and cannot recall the words correctly.
Dysgraphia, the writing disorder
Dysgraphia is one of the types of learning disabilities that hamper the writing skills of the patient. He, while writing, finds himself unable to compose complete, and meaningfully correct sentences and unable to verbalize his thoughts. Also, he has difficulty gripping the pencil/pen, and thus his writing is distorted and close to illegibility.
Dyscalculia, the mathematics disorder
This is one of the types of learning disabilities that effect the mathematical functioning of the brain. In some people who suffer from this disorder, there is a difficulty in recognizing mathematical symbols and confusion as to what function to perform on them. They cannot remember the sequence of numbers, perform simple calculations, handle money or recognize shapes.
Dysphasia/aphasia, the language disorder
Dysphasia and aphasia are the types of learning disabilities that diversely affect the usage of language; either in the written form or oral. The patient finds unable to express himself either in speech or in writing. He has a hard time comprehending written expressions or associating objects to their names.
CAPD: Central Auditory Process Disorder, the hearing disorder
CAPD renders the patient unable to comprehend what is being heard by him. It does not mean that he/she has a hearing problem but it is simply because his faculties to interpret words, as they are spoken and assign meaning to them, are affected due to these types of learning disabilities.
Non-verbal Learning Disorders
These types of learning disabilities are very hard to detect as the sufferer behaves very normally otherwise. But he completely lacks the interpretation of non-verbal communication, such as facial expressions, body language etc
Visual Processing Disorders
Due to these types of learning disabilities, the patient cannot receive information properly, sequence or recall the memories of events in a properly sequenced and timely manner. His mind simply does not process visual information correctly and result in many written and comprehension mistakes.
