Learning Disabilities

Many clients who receive services at Children's Special Services, LLC, by Susan Orloff have learning disabilities.  Mrs. Orloff is highly qualified to work with these children because she understands children and learning from many perspectives.  She has three children and three grandchildren, is a former teacher, and has been an OT for over 30 years.

 

What is a learning disability?

• Defined as below average performance in math, reading, and writing that is not due to a physical or cognitive disability (APA, 2013)
• Interferes with occupational performance in school, and other areas of occupation (APA, 2013)
• Classified in the DSM-5 as "Specific Learning Disorder" (APA, 2013)
• Types of learning disabilities: (Brehm Preparatory School, n.d.)
• Dyslexia (reading)
• Dysgraphia (writing)
• Dyscalculia (math)
• Real example from Fieldwork: A 6-year-old girl named "Carly" (Pseudonym) came into the clinic for an evaluation.  Carly's mother said that Carly was having struggles in the classroom, so she wanted to have her checked out by an OT.  After a 3-hour evaluation by Susan Orloff, OTR/L, Carly's assessments were scored.  I copied and pasted the results of some assessments below, and what you should notice is the difference between what this 6-year-old perceives (age equivalent 13 years) and what she produces in writing (age equivalent 4 years).  Mrs. Orloff said that such a spread is typical for someone who has dysgraphia. 

Test	Raw score	Standard score	Percentile	Age equiv.
Drawing Visual-motor	5	68	2	4.0
Matching Visual-spatial	34	125	95	13.0
Pegboard Fine motor	25	100	50	6.3

• Real example from Fieldwork: Mrs. Orloff, OTR/L, also suspects that Carly (mentioned in previous bullet) has Dyslexia due to her scores on the Jordan Left-Right Reversal Test.  The Jordan Right-Left Reversal Test assesses visual perceptive functioning for children ages 5+ years with normal intelligence (90+).  It assesses visual reversals of letters, numbers, and words.  While the typical child will only miss up to 2 items on the test, Carly missed 19.  (This information is per Susan Orloff, my fieldwork advisor.)

Total Raw Score	Percentile Score	Normal/Borderline/Below	Developmental Age
19	0	Below Functional Expectations	<5.0

• What can an OT do to help Carly?  Mrs. Orloff mentioned that she would like to work on the following skills with Carly to help her function better in school despite her suspected learning disability:
• Address perceptual processing specific to but not limited to figure-ground, directionality and part-whole discrimination
• Increase visual tracking skills with head isolation and left right fluency patterns.
• Increase tactile acuity and localization of input

References

 

American Psychiatric Association [APA]. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.

Brehm Preparatory School. (n.d.). Learning about learning disabilities. Retrieved from http://www.brehm.org/what-are-the-learning-disabilities/