Psychology for Exceptional Children 1:30

Module 1: Introduction to Exceptional Psychology and Special Education

The Purpose and Promise of Special Education
Exceptional Children
- experience difficulties in learning as well as those whose performance is so advanced that
modifications in curriculum and instruction are necessary to help them fulfil their potential.
- an inclusive term that refers to children with learning and/or behaviour problems, children with
physical disabilities or sensory impairments, and children with superior intellectual abilities and/or
special talents.
- The term ‘students with disabilities‘ is more restrictive than exceptional children because it does
not include gifted and talented children.
Impairment
- refers to the loss or reduced function of a particular body part or organ (e.g., a missing limb).

Disability
- exists when an impairment limits a person‘s ability to perform certain tasks (e.g., walk, see, add a row
of numbers)
- may pose a handicap in one environment but not in another.

Person with a Disability

- not handicapped, however, unless the disability leads to educational, personal, social, vocational, or
other problems
Handicap
- refers to a problem or a disadvantage that a person with a disability or an impairment encounters
when interacting with the environment.
At Risk
- refers to children who, although not currently identified as having a disability, are considered to
have a greater than usual chance of developing one.
Derogatory words
- applied to people with intellectual disabilities or behaviour problems, and other demeaning words
were used for people with health impairments or physical disabilities
- exclude people with disabilities from the activities and privileges of everyday life

Possible Benefits of Labelling

- recognizes meaningful differences in learning or behaviour
- can provide access to accommodation and services
- may lead to a protective response
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- helps practitioners and researchers communicate with one another
- enable disability-specific advocacy groups to promote specific programs
- helps make exceptional children's special needs more visible to policy-makers and the public

Possible Disadvantages of Labelling and Classification

- people might think that an individual with disability is not capable of doing other things
- may stigmatize the child that may lead to rejection or ridicule
- may negatively impact
- are often misused as explanatory constructs
- may suggest sameness and not appreciating a child's uniqueness
- suggest that learning problems are primarily the results of something wrong with the child

Republic Act (R.A.) No. 7277

- Rights of Persons with disabilities in the Philippines or the Magna Carta for Disabled Persons
- An act providing for the rehabilitation, self-development, and self-reliance of persons with
disabilities and their integration into the mainstream of society and for other purposes.
RA 9442: Persons with Disabilities Act of the Philippines
- An act providing for the Rehabilitation and Self-Reliance of Disabled Persons and Their Integration
to the Mainstream of Society and Other Purposes granting Additional Privileges and Incentives and
Prohibitions on Verbal, Non-Verbal Ridicule and Vilification Against Persons with Disability
- required the Department of Health (DOH) to institute a national health program for PWDs, establish
medical rehabilitation centers in provincial hospitals and adopt an integrated and
comprehensive approach to the health development of PWDs which shall make essential services
available to them at affordable cost.

Administrative Order 2006-003 (Strategic Framework and Operational Guidelines for the
Implementation of Health Programs for Persons with Disabilities)
• To address Barriers and improve access and reasonable accommodation of PWDs to health care
services and programs.
• To ensure accessibility, availability, appropriateness and affordability of habilitation and
rehabilitation services for PWDs, including children and disabilities.
• To ensure the development and implementation of policies and
guidelines, health service packages, including financing and provider payment schemes for health
services of PWDs
• To enhance capacity of health providers and stakeholders in improving health status of PWDs.
• To strengthen collaboration and synergy with and among stakeholders and sectors of society to
improve response to disability inclusive health agenda through regular dialogues and interactions.

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• To provide mechanism in facilitating the collection, analysis and dissemination of reliable, timely and
complete data and researches on health-related issues of PWDs in order to develop and implement
evidence-based policies and interventions.

Special Education
- a purposeful intervention designed to prevent, eliminate, and/or overcome obstacles that might
keep a child with disabilities from learning and from full and active participation in school and society
- individually planned, specialized, intensive, goal-directed instruction
- uses evidence-based teaching methods, the application of which is guided by directed and frequent
measures of student performance
- In school, those skills may be academic (reading, writing, computing), social (initiating and
maintaining a conversation), self-care (eating, dressing, using the toilet without assistance), or
vocational (career and job skills to prepare secondary students for the world of work).
- The underlying assumption of remedial intervention is that a person with disabilities needs special
instruction to succeed in typical settings.
Preventive Intervention
- keeps a potential or minor problem from becoming a disability
- include actions that stops an event from happening and those that reduce the negative outcomes of
a disability or condition that has already been identified
- can occur at three levels:
*Primary prevention
- designed to reduce the number of new cases (incidence) of a disability; it consists of
efforts to eliminate or counteract risk factors so that a child never acquires a disability

*Secondary prevention
- aimed at individuals who have already been exposed to or are displaying specific risk factors
and is intended to eliminate or counteract the effects of those risk factors

*Tertiary prevention
- aimed at individuals with a disability and intended to prevent the effects of the disability
from worsening.
Remediation/Rehabilitation
- attempts to eliminate specific effects of a disability
- teaches the person with disabilities skills for independent and successful functioning

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Compensatory Intervention
- involves teaching a substitute skill that enables a person to engage in an activity or perform a task
despite a disability
- an asset that non disabled individuals do not need, including, for example, assistive

Compensatory Interventions
- give the person with a disability an asset
that nondisabled individuals do not need, including, for example, assistive devices or special training
such as orientation and mobility instruction for a child who is blind.
Substitute Skill
- enables a person to engage in an activity or perform a task despite a disability.

Collaborating with Parents and Families in a Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Society
National Society for Crippled Children (1921)
- first parent group on behalf of children with disabilities

The United Cerebral Palsy Association (1948) and National Association for Retarded Citizens (1950)
- largely responsible for making the public aware of the special needs of children with disabilities.

The Learning Disabilities Association of America (1963)

- organized by and consisting mostly of parents, has been instrumental in bringing about educational
reform.
Parent members of the Association for Persons with Severe Handicaps (TASH) (1975)
- have been effective advocates for family-focused educational services and the inclusion of
students with severe disabilities in neighbourhood schools and general education classrooms.
The Association for Science in Autism Treatment (1998)
- mission: to disseminate accurate, scientifically sound information about autism and its treatment.

• Research shows a strong correlation between parent involvement and improvements in a variety of
measures of academic achievement and school performance such as better attendance, higher grades,
better scores on standardized tests, higher graduation rates, and improved social skills.
• To meet the needs of children with disabilities, educators must expand the traditional role of the
classroom teacher beyond that of instructing academic skills in the classroom.
• Effective special educators design and implement instructional programs that enable students with
disabilities to use and maintain academic, language, social, self-help, recreation, and vocational skills in
school, home, and community settings.

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• In their home and community lives, children may participate in some 150 different kinds of social
and physical settings
• But parents can do much more than just report on their children‘s activities and interests.
• They can provide extra skill practice and teach their children new skills in the home and community.
• When parents are involved in identifying what skills their children need to learn (and, just as
important, what they do not need to learn), the hard work expended by teachers is more likely to
produce outcomes with real significance in the lives of children and their families.

• The birth of a child with disabilities, or the onset or diagnosis of a child‘s disability, is a traumatic
“change in plans“ that ushers in an additional set of challenges and stresses.
• Early research on parents‘ responses to having children with disabilities identified mostly negative
outcomes as parents went through three stages of adjustment some call a grief cycle which is
confronting, adjusting, and accepting or adapting.
• Poyadue (1993) suggested a stage beyond acceptance or adaptation that involves an appreciation of
the positive aspects of family life with a child with a disability.
• Many parents report not only coping successfully with the challenges posed by a child with
disabilities but also experiencing benefits to the family.
• Positive responses included increased closeness among couples and stronger family bonds.
• Parenting any child demands tremendous physical and emotional energy.
• Parents of children with disabilities, however, experience added physical, emotional, and financial
stress.
• Educators who are not parents of children with disabilities, chronic illness, or severe problem
behaviour cannot possibly know the 24-hour, 7-day reality of being the parent of such a child

Caregiver
• An example excerpt from a Caregiver: “Mike sleeps when he wants to, mostly during the day. He
sleeps with a heart monitor on which alarms several times per night, because he stops breathing
frequently. Usually, I‘m up by 8:00 and often cannot go to bed until 12:00 or 1:00 because of Mike‘s
feedings, medication. It‘s hard to fit all of this into a day and still have time for sleep“.
Teacher
• Most children learn many skills without anyone teaching them.
• Children with disabilities, however, often do not acquire new skills as naturally or independently as
their typically developing peers do.
• Some parents must learn to use and/or teach their children to use special equipment and assistive
devices such as hearing aids, braces, wheelchairs, and adapted eating utensils.
Counselor
• All parents are counselors in the sense that they deal with their children‘s changing emotions,
feelings, and attitudes.

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• But parents of a child with disabilities must also deal with their child‘s feelings that result from the
disability.
• Parents play a critical role in how a child with disabilities comes to feel about them. Their
interactions can help develop an active,
outgoing child who confidently tries new experiences or a withdrawn child with negative attitude
toward himself and others.
Parent of Siblings without Disabilities
• Children are deeply influenced by having a brother or a sister with special needs; the nature of that
influence, however, is varied.
• Some studies have found negative effects, such as a higher incidence of emotional or behavioural
problems lower self-esteem or resentment or jealousy in siblings of children with disabilities.
• But researchers have also reported many instances of siblings displaying nurturing and affection
toward their brother or sister with disabilities.
Marriage Partner
• Having a child with disabilities can put stress on a marriage.
• Specific stressors can be as diverse as arguing over who is to blame for the child‘s disability;
• disagreeing about expectations for the child‘s behaviour; and spending so much time, money, and
energy on the child with disabilities, that little is left for each other

Developing and Maintaining Family-Professional Partnerships

• Ongoing two-way communication is the key operational element of the family–professional
partnership.
• Family members and professionals emphasized the need for two-way communication, stating that
both professionals and parents should listen carefully and nonjudgmentally to what each has to say.
• Accepting parents‘ statements means conveying through verbal and nonverbal means that parents‘
input is valued. Parents are more likely to speak freely and openly when they believe that what they
say is respected.
• Good listeners attend and respond to a conversation partner in a sincere and genuine manner. A
good listener pays attention to content, noting who said it and how.
• Questions to parents should not focus solely on problems or deficits, and teachers must respect
families‘ desire to keep some things private and “in the family“.
• It is important for parents to hear good news about their son or daughter. Describing or showing
parents specific instances of their child‘s good behaviour or improved performance encourages
parental involvement

Home-School Communication Methods

• Some families prefer face-to-face meetings; others appreciate receiving written messages or phone
calls; still others feel more comfortable communicating with teachers through e-mail message.

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• Teachers should ask parents which methods of communication they prefer. Parent–teacher
conferences are a universal method of home–school communication.
• In a face-to-face meeting, teachers and parents can exchange information and coordinate their
efforts to assist the child with disabilities in school and at home.
• Written messages, especially when part of a systematic program of ongoing information exchange,
can be an effective way to maintain home–school communication.
• Teachers should never rely on written messages, regardless of their form, as the sole method of
communicating with parents.
• Educators must also be sensitive to the cultural and linguistic backgrounds and educational levels of
parents
• Happy grams and special accomplishment letters. The simplest type of home–school written message
is a brief note informing parents of something positive their child has accomplished at school.
• Two-way Home–School Reporting Forms. Teachers can build a two-way, parent–teacher
communication system around a reporting form or a notebook that the child carries between home
and school.
• Teachers can develop and use a standard form or checklist

• Dialogue notebooks. Teachers and parents write observations about the child‘s behaviour or
progress each day and write comments or questions to each other.
• Home–School Contracts. A home–school contract specifies parent delivered rewards for the child
contingent on her behaviour or academic performance in the classroom.
• Home–school contracts use parent-controlled rewards, build in parent recognition and praise of the
child‘s accomplishments, and involve the teacher and parents together in a positive program to
support the child‘s learning.

• Class newsletters and websites. Class newsletters and websites are additional methods of fostering
home–school communication.
• A newsletter is also an excellent way to recognize parents who participate in various activities.
• Featuring student-produced stories, photos, and news items in a class newsletter or website
transforms a teacher task into an enjoyable and meaningful learning activity for the entire class.

• Phone Calls. Regular telephone calls can be an effective and efficient way to maintain home–school
communication and parent involvement.
• A brief conversation that focuses on a child‘s positive accomplishments lets parents and teachers
share the child‘s success and recognize each other‘s contributions.

• Voice mail. Telephone answering machines are a convenient, low-cost technology for home–school
communication.

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• E-mail and text messaging. Educators and families are increasingly communicating with one another
via e-mail, text messaging and “Internet-based“ options.

Other Forms of Parent Involvement

• Many parents of exceptional children have responded to this challenge by systematically teaching
their children self-help and daily living skills,
• assisting their children with homework, providing home-based academic tutoring to supplement
classroom instruction, and teaching language and communication skills.

• Keep the session short. 15 to 20 mins sessions 3 or 4 days per week.

• Make the experience positive. Parents should praise the child‘s attempt.
• Provide frequent opportunities for the child to respond.
• Keep Parent responses to the child consistent.
• Use tutoring to practice and extend skills already learned in school.
• Keep a record.

• Parent-to-parent (P2P) programs help parents of children with special needs become reliable allies
for one another.
• The programs give parents of children with disabilities the opportunity to receive support from a
parent who has experienced similar circumstances and challenges.
• Parents as Research Partners.

• How Much Parent Involvement? Sometimes the time and energy required for parents to participate
in home-based tutoring programs or parent education groups cause stress among family members or
guilt if the parents cannot fulfil teachers‘ expectations.
• The time required to provide additional help to a child with disabilities may take too much time and
attention away from other family members.

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Module 2: Intellectual and Learning Disabilities
Intellectual Disabilities
- in early times, people with severe deficits in cognitive functioning were identified with the term
idiocy (derived from a Greek word meaning "people who did not hold public office")
- 19th century: imbecile (derived from Latin word for "weak and feeble") indicated a less severe
degree of intellectual disability
- feeble minded and simpleton: mild intellectual disabilities

- Over the years, mental deficiency and later, mental retardation were introduced and considered
appropriate terminology
Intellectual Disabilities
- defined as "significantly sub average general intellectual functioning, existing concurrently with
deficits in adaptive behaviour and manifested during the developmental period, that adversely affects
a child's educational performance"
- characterized by significant limitations in both intellectual functioning and in adaptive behaviour as
expressed in conceptual, social and practical adaptive skills
- originates before age 18
- have traditionally been classified by the degree or level of intellectual impairment as measured by an
IQ test

- for many years, students with intellectual disabilities were classified as educable mentally retarded
(EMR)n or trainable mentally retarded (TMR)
- referred to mild and moderate levels of intellectual disability, respectively
- considered archaic and inappropriate because they suggested predetermined achievement limits

Identification and Assessment

- requires the administration of an intelligence (IQ) test by a school psychologist or other trained
professional

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- consists of a series of questions (e.g. vocabulary, similarities), problem solving (e.g. mazes, block
designs), memory, and other tasks assumed to require certain degrees of intelligence to answer or
solve correctly
Standardized tests
- the same questions and tasks are always presented in a prescribed way, and the same scoring
procedures are used each time the test is administered
- IQ scores seem to be distributed throughout the population according to a phenomenon called bell-
shaped curve, or normal curve
- a mathematical concept called the standard deviation describes how a particular score varies from
the mean, or average, of all the scores in the norm sample

*the IQ cut-off score of 70 is intended as guidelines and should not be interpreted as a hard-and-
fast requirement
*a higher IQ score of 75 or more may also be associated with intellectual disabilities if, according to
a clinician's judgment, the child exhibits deficits in adaptive behaviour thought to be caused by
impaired intellectual functioning

>intelligence is a hypothetical construct

>an IQ test measures only how a child performs at one point in time on the items included on the
test
>IQ scores can change significantly
>Intelligence testing is not an exact science. "Flynn Effect"
>Intelligence tests can be culturally biased
>An IQ Scores should never be used as the sole basis for making a diagnosis of intellectual disability
or a decision to provide or deny special education services.
Characteristics
- Intellectual disability is seldom a time-limited condition
- Although some children with intellectual disabilities make tremendous advancements in adaptive skills
(some to the point of functioning independently and no longer being considered under any disability
category), most are affected throughout their life span
- Most students with mild intellectual disabilities master academic skills up to about the sixth-grade
level and can learn vocational and daily living skills well enough to support themselves independently or
semi independently in the community

- deficits in cognitive and learning characteristics of individuals with intellectual disabilities include
poor memory, slow learning rates, attention problems, difficulty generalizing what they have learned,
and lack of motivation.

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- Memory: Students with intellectual disabilities have difficulty remembering information and have
trouble retaining information in short-term memory
- Learning Rate: The rate at which children with intellectual disabilities acquire new knowledge and
skills is well below that of typically developing children.
- Attention: Students with intellectual disabilities are typically slower to attend to relevant features
of a learning task than are students without disabilities and instead may focus on distracting
irrelevant stimuli.
- Generalization and Maintenance: Many students with disabilities, especially those with intellectual
disabilities, have trouble using their new knowledge and skills in settings or situations that differ
from the context in which they first learned those skills.
- Motivation: Some students with intellectual disabilities exhibit an apparent lack of interest in learning
or in problem-solving tasks.

*Some individuals with intellectual disabilities develop learned helplessness (an individual‘s expectation
of failure, regardless of his efforts, based on experiences of repeated failure.)

- Children with intellectual disabilities have substantial deficits in adaptive behaviour

- Limitations in self-care skills and social relationships as well as behavioural excesses are common
characteristics of individuals with intellectual disabilities

- Self-Care and Daily living skills. Individuals with intellectual disabilities who require extensive
support must often be taught basic self-care skills such as dressing, eating, and hygiene.
• Most people with mild intellectual disabilities learn to take care of their basic needs, but they often
benefit from training in self-management skills to achieve the levels of performance necessary for
independent living and successful employment

- Social development: making and sustaining friendships and personal relationships present significant
challenges for many children with intellectual disabilities.
• Poor communication skills, inability to recognize the emotional state of others, and unusual or
inappropriate behaviours when interacting with others can lead to social isolation.

- Behavioural Excesses and Challenging Behaviour: in general, the more severe the intellectual
impairment, the higher the incidence and severity of problem behaviour
• Difficulty accepting criticism, limited self-control, and bizarre and inappropriate behaviours such as
aggression or self-injury are observed more often in children with intellectual disabilities than in
children without disabilities.
• Some genetic syndromes associated with intellectual disabilities tend to include atypical and
maladaptive behaviour.

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Prader-Willi Syndrome
- often engage in self-injurious, obsessive-compulsive behaviour and pica (eating non-nutritive
substances)

- Positive Attributes: many children and adults with intellectual disabilities display tenacity and
curiosity in learning, get along well with others, and are positive influences on those around them
Prevalence
- rates vary greatly
- such differences s in prevalence are in large part a function of the widely differing criteria for
identifying students with intellectual disabilities.
Causes and Prevention

- Biomedical Causes: refers to several symptoms or characteristics that occur together and provide
the defining features of a given disease or condition.
- Environmental Causes: When no biological risk factor is evident, the cause is presumed to be
psychosocial disadvantage, environmental influences such as poverty, minimal opportunities to
develop early language, child abuse and neglect, and/or chronic social or sensory deprivation

• Although no direct evidence proves that social and environmental deprivation causes intellectual
disability, researchers generally believe that these influences cause many cases of mild intellectual
disabilities.
• Empirical support for the causal influence of poverty is found in research showing that children
who live in poverty have a higher-than-normal chance of being identified as having intellectual
disabilities

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- Prevention: medical advances have noticeably reduced the incidence of intellectual disabilities caused
by some of the known biological factors

• Genetic disorders are detected during pregnancy by two types of tests: screening procedures and
diagnostic tests.
• Obstetrician routinely provide non-invasive screening procedures, such as ultrasound and maternal
serum alpha-fetoprotein (AFP),
• to women whose pregnancy is considered at risk for a congenital disability and other biochemical
markers in the mother‘s bloodstream and can identify pregnancies at risk for disabilities such as Down
syndrome and spina bifida.
Education Approaches
- Academic Curriculum: all students with intellectual disabilities should receive instruction in the basic
skills of reading, writing, and math.
- Functional Curriculum. Learning functional curriculum content increases, a student‘s independence,
self-direction, health and fitness, and enjoyment in everyday school, home, community, and
work environments.
- Self-Determination: Self-determined learners set personal goals, plan steps for achieving those goals,
choose and implement a course of action, evaluate their performance, and adjust in what they are
doing to reach their goals.
- Task analysis: Means breaking down complex or multistep skills into smaller, easier-to-learn subtasks.
The subskills or subtasks are then sequenced, either in the natural order in which they are typically
performed or from easiest to most difficult.
- Active student response: Research in general and special education has been unequivocal in its
support of the positive relationship between students‘ active engagement with academic tasks and
their achievement. Active Student Response refers to an observable response made to an
instructional antecedent. ASR occurs when a student emits a detectable response to ongoing
instruction.
- Systematic Feedback. Instructional Feedback —information provided to students about their
performance—falls into two broad categories:
• (a) praise and/or other forms of confirmation or positive reinforcement for correct responses, an
(b) error correction for incorrect responses.
• Feedback is most effective when it is specific, immediate, positive, frequent, and differential
- Transfer of Stimulus Control: Trial-and-error learning is inefficient and frustrating for students
without disabilities. For students with intellectual disabilities and other learning problems, it is likely to
be a complete waste of time.

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- Generalization and Maintenance: refer to the extent to which students use what they have learned
across settings and over time. Although much remains to be learned about helping students with
intellectual other disabilities get the most out of what they learn, researchers have developed the
promising beginnings of a reliable “technology of generalization“.
- Direct and Frequent Measurement: Teachers should verify the effects of their instruction by
measuring student performance directly and frequently. Measurement is direct when it objectively
records the learner‘s performance of the behaviour of interest in the natural environment for that
skill. It is frequent when it occurs on a regular basis; ideally, measurement should take place as often
as instruction occurs.
Learning Disabilities
Specific Learning Disability
- a disorder in 1 or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in
using language, spoken or written, which disorder may manifest itself in an imperfect ability to listen,
think, speak, read, write, spell, or to do mathematical calculations.
- includes such conditions as perceptual disabilities, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia,
and developmental aphasia.
- does not include a learning problem that is primarily the result of visual, hearing, or motor
disabilities, of mental retardation, of emotional disturbance, or of environmental, cultural, or economic
disadvantage.

Ability-Achievement Discrepancy
- Children with learning disabilities exhibit an unexpected difference between general ability and
achievement—a discrepancy that would not be predicted by the student‘s general intellectual ability.
- Children who are having minor or temporary difficulties in learning should not be identified as
learning disabled.
Exclusion
- The IDEA definition of learning disabilities identifies students with significant learning problems
that are not “primarily the result“ of other conditions that can impede learning, such as another
recognized disability or lack of opportunity to learn due to cultural factors, environmental or
economic disadvantage, or limited English proficiency.

Need for Special Education

- Students with learning disabilities show specific and severe learning problems despite standard
educational efforts and therefore need specially designed instruction to meet their unique needs.

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Characteristics

• Learning disabilities: associated with problems in listening, reasoning, memory, attention, selecting
and focusing on relevant stimuli, and the perception and processing of visual and/or auditory
information.
• These perceptual and cognitive processing difficulties are assumed to be the underlying causes of
the following characteristics that students
with learning disabilities experience, either individually or in combination:
• reading problems, deficits in written language, underachievement in math, poor social skills, attention
deficits and hyperactivity, behaviour problems, and low self-esteem/self-efficacy.

• Reading Problems: About 80% of all children identified as learning disabled are referred for special
education because of reading problems.
• Evidence suggests that a specific reading disability, sometimes called dyslexia, is a persistent deficit,
not simply a developmental lag in linguistic or basic reading skills.
Dyslexia
- a specific learning disability that is neurobiological in origin (International Dyslexia Association)
- characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and
decoding abilities.
- typically result from a deficit in the phonological
component of language that is often unexpected in relation to other cognitive abilities and the
provision of effective classroom instruction.

• Phonological awareness: the “conscious understanding and knowledge that language is made up of
sounds“.
• The most important aspect of phonological awareness for learning to read is phonemic awareness,
the knowledge that words consist of separate sounds, or phonemes, and the ability to manipulate
these individual sound units

• Written Language Deficits: Students with learning disabilities perform significantly lower than their
age-matched peers without disabilities on all written expression tasks, including the transcription of
handwriting, spelling, punctuation, vocabulary, grammar, and expository writing.
• Some students with learning disabilities are competent readers but struggle mightily with written
language.

• Math Underachievement: Numerical reasoning and calculation pose major problems for many students
with learning disabilities. Students with learning disabilities perform lower than typically achieving
children on every type of arithmetic problem at every grade level.

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• Social Skills Deficits: About 75% of students with learning disabilities exhibit deficits in social
skills.
• Poor social skills often lead to rejection, low social status, fewer positive interactions with
teachers, difficulty making friends, and loneliness—all of which are experienced by many students
with learning disabilities regardless of classroom placement

• Attention Problems and Hyperactivity. Some students with learning disabilities have difficulty
attending to a task and/or display high rates of hyperactivity.
• Children who consistently exhibit these problems may be diagnosed with attention-
deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
• A high degree of comorbidity (two conditions occurring in the same individual) between learning
disabilities and ADHD has frequently been reported

• Behavioural Problems: Researchers have consistently found a higher-than-usual incidence of

behavioural problems among students with learning disabilities.
• Although research clearly shows increased behavioural problems among children with learning
disabilities, the relationships between the students‘ behaviour problems and academic difficulties are
not known

• Low Ratings of Self-Efficacy: Students with learning disabilities are more likely to report lower
levels of self-efficacy, mood, effort, and hope than their peers without learning disabilities.
• It is not known whether a tendency for negative self-perceptions is an inherent characteristic of
learning disabilities or the result of a painful history of frustration and disappointment with academic
and social situations.
Causes
• Brain Damage or Dysfunction. Some professionals believe that all children with learning disabilities
suffer from some type of neurological injury or dysfunction.
• Heredity. Growing evidence indicates that genetics may account for at least some family links with
dyslexia.
• Biochemical Imbalance. Most professionals today give little credence to biochemical imbalance as a
significant cause of learning disabilities or to regimented diets and heavy doses of vitamins as
treatment.
• Environmental Factors. The tendency for learning disabilities to run in families also suggests a
correlation between environmental influences on children‘s early development and subsequent
achievement in school.

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Identification and Assessment
Curriculum-based measurement (CBM)
- also called progress monitoring
- entails measuring the growth of students‘ proficiency in the core skills that contribute to success
in school.
- a formative evaluation method in that it provides information on student learning as instruction
takes place over time.
*By contrast, the results of a summative evaluation cannot be used to inform instruction, because it
is conducted after instruction has been completed (e.g., at the end of a grading period or school
year).
Direct daily measurement
- CBM on steroids
- entails recording a measure of the student‘s performance each time a specific skill is taught
- Measures such as correct rate (e.g., number of multiplication facts stated or written correctly per
minute), error rate, and percent correct would be recorded.

Criterion-Reference Tests
- differ from norm-referenced tests in that a child‘s score on a criterion-referenced test is
compared with a predetermined criterion, or mastery level, rather than with normed scores of other
students.
- The value of criterion-referenced tests is that they identify the specific skills the child has already
learned and the skills that require instruction.
Educational Approaches
Content Enhancement
- the general term for a wide range of techniques teachers use to enhance the organization and
delivery of curriculum content so that students can better access, interact with, comprehend, and
retain that information.
- To effectively use a content-enhancement approach, teachers need to be thoughtful about the
curriculum content to be covered and what learning approaches students need to be successful with
that content
enhancements.
Graphic Organizers
- visual-spatial arrangements of information containing words or concepts connected graphically that
help students see meaningful hierarchical, comparative, and sequential relationships.

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Visual displays
- can be effective for teaching abstract concepts to students with disabilities. For example, the
visual maps to help students see how the “big idea“ of convection operates in a similar fashion across
several applications.

Note-Taking Strategies
- Students who take good notes and study them later consistently receive higher test scores than
students who only listen to the lecture and read the text.
Guided notes
- are teacher-prepared handouts that provide an outline of the lecture content, which students
complete during class by writing in key facts, concepts, and/ or relations.
Structured reading worksheets
- are teacher-prepared supplements that help students study and comprehend assigned reading from
content-rich textbooks by prompting them to find and write key points.

Mnemonics
- can help students with learning disabilities recall specific academic content. Mnemonic strategies
combine special presentation of information with explicit strategies for recall and are most often used
to help students remember large amounts of unfamiliar information or make connections between two
or more facts or concepts
Learning Strategies
- can be defined as “an individual‘s approach to a learning task. A strategy includes how a person
thinks and acts when planning, executing, and evaluating performance on a task and its outcomes.
Educational Placement Alternatives
• General Education Classroom. All of the methods described in the previous section for enhancing the
general education curriculum help promote the success of students with learning disabilities in general
education classrooms. Special educators can facilitate the success of these students in inclusive
classrooms by teaching them behaviours that are valued by general education teachers.

• Consultant Teacher. The consultant teacher helps the general education teacher select assessment
devices, curriculum materials, and instructional activities. The consultant may even demonstrate
teaching methods or behaviour management strategies.

• Resource Room. Some advantages of the resource room model are that (a) students do not lose
their identity with their general education class peer group; (b) students can receive the intensive,
individualized instruction they need every day, which may not be possible in the general education
classroom; and (c) flexible scheduling allows the resource room to serve a fairly large number of
students
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• Separate Classroom. In a separate classroom, a special education teacher is responsible for all
educational programming for 8 to 12 students with learning disabilities. The academic achievement
deficiencies of some children with learning disabilities are so severe that they need full-time
placement in a setting with a specially trained teacher

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Module 3: Emotional, Autism, and Communication Disorders
Emotional Disturbance
- condition exhibiting one or more of the following characteristics over a long period
- an inability to learn which cannot be explained by intellectual, sensory, and health factors
- an inability to build or maintain satisfactory interpersonal relationships with peers and teachers
- inappropriate types of behaviour or feelings under normal circumstances;
- a general pervasive mood of unhappiness or depression; or
- tendency to develop physical symptoms or fears associated with personal or school problems.

Emotional or Behavioural Disorder

- a disability that is characterized by emotional or behavioural responses in school program so
different form appropriate age, cultural, or ethnic norms that the responses adversely affect
educational performance including academic, social, vocational or personal skills
- more than a temporary, expected response to stressful events in the environment; consistently
exhibited in two different settings
- includes a schizophrenic disorder, affective disorder, anxiety disorder, or other sustained disorder
of conduct or adjustment, affecting a child if the disorder affects educational performance as
described paragraph.

Characteristics
- behaviour that falls significantly beyond the norms of their cultural and age group on two
dimensions:
Externalizing (aggression, acting out)
Internalizing (anxiety, social withdrawal)

Academic Achievement: Most students with emotional or behavioural disorders perform one or more
years below grade level academically

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Intelligence: Many more children with emotional or behavioural disorders score in the slow learner or
mild intellectual disabilities range on IQ tests than do children without disabilities. No studies
have found an average IQ of 100 or higher.

Social Skills and Interpersonal Relationships: The ability to develop and maintain interpersonal
relationships during childhood and adolescence is an important predictor of future adjustment.

Juvenile Delinquency: More than one-third of students with emotional or behavioural disorders are
arrested during their school years.

Prevalence
Gender: Boys identified as emotionally or behaviourally disordered are likely to have externalizing
disorders in the form of antisocial, aggressive behaviours. Although girls with emotional or
behavioural disorders are more likely to show internalizing disorders such as anxiety and social
withdrawal, research shows that girls have problems with aggression and antisocial behaviour as well

Causes
Biological Factors: Brain Disorders - the result of either brain dysgenesis (abnormal brain
development) or brain injury (caused by influences such as disease or trauma that alter the structure
or function of a brain that had been developing normally up to that point).
Genetics: Evidence indicates the presence of genetic links to some forms of emotional or behavioural
disorders.
Temperament: A child‘s temperament is unlikely in itself to cause emotional or behaviour problems, it
may predispose the child to problems by interacting with environmental factors, such as making
parenting interactions more difficult
Environmental Factors: Home - Decades of research show clearly that children with emotional or
behavioural problems are more likely to come from homes in which parents are inconsistent
disciplinarians, use harsh and excessive punishment, spend little time engaged in prosocial activities
with their children, do not monitor the whereabouts and activities of their children, and show little
love and affection for good behaviour
School: Educational practices that contribute to the development of emotional or behavioural
problems in children include ineffective instruction that results in academic failure, unclear rules, and
expectations for appropriate behaviour, inconsistent and punitive discipline practices, infrequent
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teacher praise and approval for academic and social behaviour, and failure to individualize instruction
to accommodate diverse learners
Community: Students who associate with peers who exhibit antisocial behaviour are likely to
experience trouble in the community and at school.

Identification and Assessment

Screening Tests: Screening is the process of differentiating between children who are not likely to
be disabled and those who either show signs of behavioural disturbance or seem to be at risk for
developing behaviour problems.
Direct Observation and Measurement of Behaviour: the actual behaviours that cause concern about a
child are clearly specified and observed in the settings in which they normally occur (e.g., in the
classroom, on the playground).
Functional Behavioural Assessment: Functional behavioural assessment (FBA) is a systematic process
for gathering information to understand why a student may be engaging in challenging behaviour.

Educational Approaches
Academics Skills: Good instruction is the foundation for effective behaviour management in the
classroom.
Social Skills: Helps students in preschool classrooms through third grade learn social skills in six units:
making conversation, communicating feelings, expressing oneself, cooperating with peers, playing with
peers, and responding to aggression and conflict.
Fostering Strong Teacher-Student Relationships: Having an empathetic relationship with a child
refers to a teacher‘s ability to recognize and understand the many nonverbal cues that often are the
keys to understanding the individual needs of children with emotional or behavioural disorders.

Autism Spectrum Disorders

- Difficulty relating to others in a typical manner
- Extreme aloneness that seemed to isolate the child from the outside world
- Resistance to being picked up or held by parents
- Significant speech deficits, including mutism and echolalia
- In some cases, exceptional memorization skills
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- Early specific food preferences
- Monotonous, obsessive desire for repetition and sameness
- Bizarre, repetitive behaviour such as rocking back and forth and spinning objects
- Explosive temper tantrums
- Lack of imagination and few spontaneous behaviours such as typical play
- Normal physical appearance

Autism Spectrum Disorder

- a group of neurodevelopmental disorders
marked by persistent deficits in social communication and interaction, and
by restricted, repetitive patterns of behaviour and interests.
- means a developmental disability affecting verbal and nonverbal communication and social
interaction, generally evident before age three,
that adversely affects a child‘s educational performance.
- marked by three defining features with onset before age 3:
(a) qualitative impairment of social interaction (e.g., lack of social or emotional reciprocity and
affect);
(b) qualitative impairment of communication (e.g., delay or total absence of spoken language); and
(c) restricted, repetitive, and stereotyped patterns of behaviour, interests, and activities (e.g.,
stereotypic or repetitive speech or motor behaviour, excessive adherence to routines, preoccupation
with unusual objects.
- the combination of behavioural deficits (e.g., inability to relate to others, lack of functional
language), behavioural excesses (e.g., self-stimulation, bizarre and challenging behaviours), and unusual
responses to or interest in sensory aspects of their environment makes children with autism stand
out as strikingly different from most
children.

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Asperger's Disorder
- impairment in social areas, particularly an inability to understand how to interact socially
- deficits in the use of nonverbal behaviours related to social interaction such as eye gaze, facial
expression, gestures, body posture, and judging personal space are common
- children with this condition do not have general language delay, and most have average or above-
average intelligence
- students with this condition are considered slackers by teachers and peers
- often misdiagnosed as having obsessive-compulsive disorder or attention-deficit/hyperactive
disorder (ADHD)
- have intense interest in a particularly subject, often atypical things or parts of things
- clumsiness, difficulty with fine- and/or gross-motor activities
- inflexible adherence to routines
- fascination with maps, globe, and routes
- superior rote memory, tendency to amass many related facts
- speech and language impairments in the areas of semantics, pragmatics, and prosody (volume,
intonation, inflection, and rhythm); pedantic, odd speech patterns; formal style of speaking
- difficulty understanding others' feelings
- extensive vocabulary, reading commences at an early age (hyperlexia)
- perfectionist, frustrated when asked to submit work they believe is below standard

Prevalence
- CDC: 1 in 110 children have autism; Asia, Europe, and North America reporting rates from 0.6% to
1%

Causes
- autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder with no medical or physiological marker
- 90-95% of cases are idiopathic autism, meaning the etiology or cause is unknown
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- Theory of Psychogenesis: an outcome of uninterested, cold parents who were unable to develop an
emotional bond with their children
- no causal link between parenting styles and autism has ever been discovered

Genetic Inheritance
- The current theory among autism genetics researchers supports the idea of complex inheritance.
This means that multiple genetic factors are likely to be involved, which in combination may
predispose an individual to develop autism.

Identification
- signs that warrant concern during the first year and a half of life include a lack of pointing or
gestures, infrequent or poor-quality imitation of the caregiver's facial expression, no single words by
16 months, lack of smiling, not responding to name being called, lack of joint attention, and loss of
previously acquired language or social skills at any age

Diagnosis
- children who fail screening tests or whose parents or professionals have reason for concern
undergo a complete diagnostic evaluation

Educational Approaches
- children with autism are among the most difficult students to teach
- may focus on irrelevant stimuli while seeming oblivious to instructional stimuli, show little or no
apparent interest in their teachers and peers, and with little or no warning have a "meltdown" that
includes aggression, property destruction, self-injury, or all three

Early Intensive Behavioural Intervention

- has helped with learning communication, language and social skills so that they have been able to
succeed in general education classrooms

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Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA)
- uses behavioural principles such as positive reinforcement to teach children skills in a planned,
systematic manner.

Communication Disorders
Communication
- the interactive exchange of information, ideas, feelings, needs, and desires.
- Each communication interaction includes three elements:
(a) a message,
(b) a sender who expresses the message, and
(c) a receiver who responds to the message.

Language
- formalized code used by a group of people to communicate with one another. All languages consist
of a set of abstract symbols—sounds, letters, numbers, elements of sign language—and a system of
rules for combining those symbols into larger units.

Five Dimensions of Language

Phonology - refers to the linguistic rules governing a language‘s sound system.
Phoneme - a speech sound capable of differentiating meaning. Only the initial phoneme prevents the
words pear and bear from being identical.
Morphology
- concerned with the basic units of meaning and how those units are combined into words.
Morphemes
- the smallest elements of language that carry meaning, can be sounds, syllables, or whole words.
Syntax
- the system of rules governing the meaningful arrangement of words. If morphemes could be strung
together in any order, language would be an unintelligible tangle of words
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Semantics
- concerns the meaning of words and combinations of words. The semantic knowledge of competent
language users includes vocabulary and concept development, and connotative meanings by context.
Pragmatics
- govern the social use of language. There are three kinds of pragmatic skills:
(a) using language for different purposes,
(b) changing language according to the needs of a listener or situation and
(c) following rules for conversations and storytelling.
Speech
- the oral production of language. Although speech is not the only vehicle for expressing language (e.g.,
gestures, manual signing, pictures, and written symbols are also used), it is the fastest, most efficient
method of communication by language.

Articulation Disorders
- errors in the production of speech sounds; inability to produce a given sound physically
Fluency Disorders
- difficulties with the flow or rhythm of speech; interruption in the flow of speaking characterized
by atypical rate, rhythm, and repetitions in sounds, syllables, words, and phrases, may be accompanied
by excessive tension, struggle behaviour, and secondary mannerisms
Voice Disorders
- problems with the quality or use of one‘s voice; the abnormal production and/or absences of vocal
quality, pitch, loudness, resonance, and/or duration, which is inappropriate

Language - impaired comprehension and/or use of spoken, written, and/or other symbol systems. The
disorder may involve
(a) the form of language (phonology, morphology, and syntax),
(b) the content of language (semantics), and/or
(c) the function of language in communication (pragmatics) in any combination“.

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 Speech-Sound Errors
Distortions
- a speech sound is distorted when its sounds more like the intended phoneme than another speech
sound but is conspicuously wrong
Substitutions
- Children with this problem are often certain they have said the correct word and may resist
correction. Substitution of sounds can cause considerable confusion for the listener.
Omissions
- Children may omit certain sounds, drop consonants from the ends of words. Most of us leave out
sounds at times, but an extensive omission problem can make speech unintelligible
Additions
- extra sounds makes comprehension difficult

Phonological Disorders
- does not produce the sound correctly at other times

Stuttering
- rapid-fire repetitions of consonant or vowel sounds, especially at the beginnings of words,
prolongations, hesitations, interjections, and complete verbal blocks
Cluttering
- excessive speech rate, repetitions, extra sounds, mispronounced sounds, and poor or absent use of
pauses

Characteristics
Phonation disorder - causes the voice to sound breathy, hoarse, husky, or strained most of the time
Resonance Disorder - either too many sounds coming out through the air passages of the nose
(hypernasality) or, conversely, not enough resonance of the nasal passages (hyponasality)

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Causes
- organic: attributable to damage, dysfunction, or malformation of a
- functional: cannot be ascribed to a specific physical condition, and its origin is not clearly known

Speech Impairments
- Physical factors that frequently result in speech impairments are cleft palate, paralysis of the speech
muscles, absence of teeth, craniofacial abnormalities, enlarged adenoids, and traumatic brain injury

Dysarthria - group of speech disorders caused by neuromuscular impairments in respiration,

phonation, resonation, and articulation

Aphasia - loss of the ability to process and use language

Identification and Assessment

Case history and physical examination
- Most professional speech and language assessments begin with the creation of the child‘s case
history.
Articulation
- Speech errors by the child are assessed. A record is kept of the sounds that are defective, how
they are being mispronounced, and the number of errors.
Hearing
- usually tested to determine whether a hearing problem is causing the suspected communication
disorder.
Phonological awareness and processing
- Competent speakers and users of language can distinguish the presence and absence of speech
sounds, differences between and among sounds, and when individual sounds begin and end.
Overall language development and vocabulary
- The amount of vocabulary a child has acquired is generally a good indicator of language competence.

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Assessment of language function
- emphasized the circumstances surrounding the various functions of communication (e.g.,
requesting, naming) rather than the structure and form of language (e.g., words and sentences).
Language samples
- An important part of any evaluation for communication disorders is obtaining accurate samples of
the child‘s expressive speech and language.
Observation in natural settings
- Observation and measurement of children‘s language use in social contexts and everyday activities
are important elements of assessment for communication disorders.

Educational Approaches
Speech-language pathologist (SLP)
- school-based professional with primary responsibility for identifying, evaluating, and providing
therapeutic services to children with communication disorders

Articulation Errors Therapy

- Discrimination activities are designed to improve the child‘s ability to listen carefully and detect the
differences between similar sounds (e.g., the /t/ in tape, the /k/ in acape) and to differentiate
between correct and distorted speech sounds.

Phonological Errors
- When a child‘s spoken language problem includes one or more phonological errors, the goal of therapy
is to help the child identify the error pattern(s) and gradually produce more linguistically appropriate
sound patterns

Treating Voice Disorders

- SLPs often recommend environmental modifications; a person who is consistently required to speak
in a noisy setting, for example, may benefit from the use of a small microphone to reduce vocal
straining and shouting. Most remedial techniques, however, offer direct vocal rehabilitation, which
helps the child with a voice disorder gradually learn to produce more acceptable and efficient speech

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Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
- persistent pattern of inattention and/or hyperactivity-impulsivity that is more frequent and severe
than is typically observed in individuals at a comparable level of development

Inattention
- not attending to details, difficulty sustaining attention to tasks or activities, does not seem to
listen, not following through on instructions, difficulty organizing tasks and activities, dislikes tasks
that require sustained mental effort, frequently loses things, easily distracted, often forgetful

Hyperactivity and impulsivity

- fidgeting, restlessness, runs about or climbs on furniture, often excessively loud or noisy, often “on
the go“ as if “driven by a motor,“ talks excessively, blurts out answers, difficulty waiting to take his
or her turn, interrupts others, acts without thinking, impatient, rushes through activities or tasks,
has difficulty resisting temptations.

Academic Achievement and Comorbidity with other Disabilities

- score lower than their age mates on IQ and achievement tests, more than half require remedial
tutoring for basic skills, and about 30% repeat one or more grades

Causes
- no clear and consistent causal evidence links brain damage or dysfunction to the behavioural
symptoms of ADHD
- associated with a wide range of genetic disorders and diseases.

Medication
- Methylphenidate, sold under the trade name Ritalin, is the most frequently prescribed medication
- Dextroamphetamine (Dexedrine), Dextroamphetamine Sulfate (Adderall), Methamphetamine
Hydrochloride (Desoxyn), Premoline (Cylert)
- positive response typically includes a reduction in hyperactivity, increased attention and time on
task, increased academic productivity, and improvements in general conduct.
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- common side effects include insomnia, decreased appetite, headaches, weight loss, a decrease of
positive affect, and irritability.

Behavioural Intervention
- methods include positive reinforcement for on-task behaviour, modifying assignments and
instructional activities to promote success, and systematically gradually teaching self-control.
- providing frequent opportunities to actively respond within ongoing instruction; and providing
differential consequences for child behaviour (e.g., positive reinforcement such as praise and tokens
for appropriate behaviour, ignoring inappropriate behaviour, and time out or response cost for
inappropriate behaviour)

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