Teaching and Learning Skills

Course Code: EDU 103

TOPIC: INTELLECTUAL AND LEARNING
DISABILITIES
Lecture 4
BS Applied Psychology
Instructor : Faisal Mumtaz Chahal
Department of Psychology
Email:drfmc@lgu.edu.pk
 Preamble
In the previous lecture, we studied

• The purpose and promise of Special education

• Planning and providing special education

• Collaborating with parents and families in a culturally and linguistically

diverse society.
 Objectives
At the end of this presentation, the students will able to

• Learn about different Intellectual disabilities.

• Learn different identification, assessment and measurement technique
use
• Study different Learning disabilities
• Know how the assessment, measurement being used
• Be able to differentiate between different Intellectual and Learning
disabilities.
Intellectual disabilities
 Intellectual Disabilities

• In IDEA(Individuals with Disabilities Education Act), intellectual disability

is defined as “significantly subaverage general intellectual functioning,
existing concurrently with deficits in adaptive behavior and manifested
during the developmental period, that adversely affects a child’s
educational performance.” 

• According to AAIDD’s "Intellectual disability is characterized by

significant limitations in both intellectual functioning and in adaptive
behavior as expressed in conceptual, social, and practical adaptive
skills. This disability originates before age 18."
 Classification of Intellectual Disability 

• For many years, students with intellectual disabilities were classified as

educable mentally retarded (EMR) or trainable mentally retarded (TMR). 
• These terms referred to mild and moderate levels of intellectual disability,
respectively. 
• Intellectual disability have traditionally been classified by the level of
intellectual impairment as measured by an IQ test.
• The most widely used classification system consists of four levels of
severity according to the range of IQ scores. (Mild, moderate, severe,
profound)
Classification of Intellectual Disability
 Adaptive Behavior 
• Children with intellectual disabilities have substantial deficits in adaptive
behavior.
• Limitations in self-care skills and social relationships as well as behavioral
excesses are common characteristics of individuals with intellectual
disabilities.
SELF-CARE AND DAILY LIVING SKILLS:
• Individuals with intellectual disabilities who require extensive supports 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.
 SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
• Poor communication skills, inability to recognize the emotional state of
others, and unusual or inappropriate behaviors when interacting with
others can lead to social isolation.
• Teaching appropriate social and interpersonal skills to students with
intellectual disabilities is one of the most important functions of special
education.
• CHALLENGING BEHAVIOR:
• Difficulty accepting criticism, limited self-control, and bizarre
and inappropriate behaviors such as aggression or self-injury are
observed more often in children with intellectual disabilities than in
children without disabilities.
 Causes
• The term syndrome refers to a number of symptoms or characteristics
that occur together and provide the defining features of a given disease
or condition. Down syndrome and fragile X syndrome are the two most
common genetic causes of intellectual disabilities.

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.
 Educational Approaches
• 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.
 Identification and Assessment
Assessing Intellectual Functioning:
• ”Requires the administration of an intelligence (IQ) test by a school
psychologist or other trained professional. ”
• An IQ test consists of a series of questions, problem solving, and other
tasks assumed to require certain degrees of intelligence to answer or
solve correctly.
• IQ tests are standardized tests.
 Assessing Intellectual Functioning
• IQ tests are particularly useful for objectively identifying an overall deficit
in cognitive functioning.
• Intelligence is a hypothetical construct.
 Assessing Intellectual Functioning
1. An IQ test measures only how a child performs at one point in time on
the items included on the test.
2. IQ scores can change significantly.
3. Intelligence tests can be culturally biased. 
4. An IQ score should never be used as the sole basis for making a
diagnosis of intellectual disability or a decision to provide or deny
special education service.
5. An IQ score should not be used to determine IEP objectives.
 Identification and Assessment
• Assessing Adaptive Behavior:
Adaptive behavior is “the collection of conceptual, social, and practical
skills”. 
• Stanford–Binet Intelligence test:
The Stanford-Binet test is an examination meant to gauge intelligence
through five factors of cognitive ability.
These five factors include fluid reasoning, knowledge, quantitative
reasoning, visual-spatial processing and working memory.
 Assessing Adaptive Behavior
• AAIDD DIAGNOSTIC ADAPTIVE BEHAVIOR SCALE:
Designed for use with individuals from 4 to 21 years old, includes a cutoff
point at which an individual is considered to have significant limitations in
adaptive behavior.
• VINELAND ADAPTIVE BEHAVIOR SCALES:
1. Available in three versions.
Assessing Adaptive Behavior

ADAPTIVE BEHAVIOR ASSESSMENT

SYSTEM-II :

1. The ABAS-II provides a

comprehensive assessment of 10
specific adaptive skills in three
domains (conceptual, social and
practical).
 Reading Problem
• Difficulty in reading is most common problem among student.

• 80% of the children who suffer from learning disability and get
special education because of the reading problem.

• Children who fail to learn reading from the first grade lag behind
their peer both in reading and in academic achievement.

• Specific reading disability is called “Dyslexia”

 Reading problem
• Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that is neurobiological in origin

• In this child face difficulties with accurate and fluent word recognition and
decoding ability is also not good.

• These children fail in the word level of processing and most common
cognitive limitation of these children.
 Writing Language Deficits
• Student with writing disability face problem in handwriting, spelling,
punctuation, vocabulary, and grammar.

• Some student struggle in writing a complete sentence or phrases.

• Fortunately, teachers can help most students with learning disabilities to

improve their writing and spelling skills by giving instruction on specific
writing skills
 Math's 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.

• Deficits in retrieving number facts and solving problems are particularly

marked.

• Research shows that guided practice, fluency training, and feedback

can improve the math performance of students with learning disabilities.
 Social Skills Deficits
• Students with learning disabilities face many social problems.

• Students with learning disabilities exhibit 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.
 Attention Problems and Hyperactivity
• Some students with learning disabilities have difficulty attending to a task
and display high rates of hyperactivity.

• Children who consistently exhibit these problems may be diagnosed with

attention-deficit or hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

• A high degree of comorbidity (two conditions occurring in the same

individual) between learning disabilities and ADHD has frequently been
reported.
 Behavioral Problems

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

behavioral problem among students with learning disabilities.

• A comparative study of more than 600 adolescents with and without

learning disabilities found a higher frequency of risk-taking behaviors
such as smoking, marijuana use, delinquency, acts of aggression, and
gambling among the youth with learning disabilities.
 Causes Of Child Learning Disability
Four classes of suspected causes of child learning disability are:

1. Brain damage
2. Heredity
3. Biochemical imbalance
4. Environmental agents
 1) Brain Damage
• Some professionals believe that all children with learning disabilities
suffer from some type of neurological injury or dysfunction.

• The term brain dysfunction is sometimes used, especially by physicians.

They said that brain damage by asserting that the child’s brain does not
function properly.
 2) Heredity
• Inheritance also play major role in learning disability
• Genetics may account for at least some family links with dyslexia.

3) Biochemical Imbalance
• Biochemical imbalance due to artificial colorings and flavorings in a
child’s diet or vitamin deficiencies have been suggested as causes of
learning disabilities.
 Biochemical imbalance

• A treatment for learning disabilities consisting of a diet with no foods

containing synthetic colors or flavors.

• The blood streams of children does not synthesis the normal amount of
vitamins it cause learning disability.

• Megavitamin therapy is given to the children with learning disability in

this therapy massive daily dose of the vitamins given to overcome
vitamin deficiencies.
 Environmental Factors
• Particularly poor living conditions early in a child’s life and limited
exposure to highly effective instruction in school probably contribute to
the learning problems experienced.

• Children who received very less communication exchanges with their

parents were more likely to show deficits in vocabulary, language use,
and intellectual development before entering school.
 Identification and Assessment
Curriculum-Based Measurement
• 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.

• Formative evaluation method in that it provides information on student

learning as instruction takes place over time.

• Summative evaluation cannot be used to inform instruction, because it

is conducted after instruction has been completed
 Identification and Assessment
DIRECT DAILY MEASUREMENT
• Recording a measure of the student’s performance each time a specific
skill is taught.

Response to intervention (RTI), this approach is used for the prevention

and early identification of learning disabilities, uses curriculum-based
measurement.
 Identification and Assessment
1. PRIMARY INTERVENTION
Primary prevention is provided to all students in the form of evidence-based
curriculum and instruction in the general education classroom.
2. SECONDARY INTERVENTION
Students who are struggling in the general education program receive an
intensive fixed-duration trial (e.g., 10 to 12 weeks) of small-group
supplemental tutoring using a research-validated program.
3. TERTIARY INTERVENTION
A special educators who did not show progress in small group intervention
in secondary intervention receive intensive individualized interventions.
 Identification and Assessment
Intelligence and Achievement Tests
This test is widely used as the diagnostic tool for the children suffer from learning
disability these are norm referenced test.

Norm reference test: these test are develop in this test one student score is
compare to the scores of other students of the same age who have taken the test.

Criterion-Referenced Tests
• Compare a child’s score with a predetermined criteria, rather than with normal
score of other student.
• This test is useful in identifying specific skills the child has learned as well as
skills that require instruction.
 Educational Approaches
Content enhancement
• In content enhancement approach the teacher must be thought full about
curriculum to be covered and use approach which help student to
understand content.
• Content enhancements often helpful to students with learning disabilities
include graphic organizers and visual displays, note-taking strategies,
and mnemonics.
 Educational Approaches
Learning strategy
• “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”

• Students use task-specific strategies to guide themselves

successfully through a learning task or problem.

• They use mnemonic devices to remember strategies or stage.

 Educational Placement Alternatives
General Education Classroom
According to IDEA that students with disabilities be educated with students
without disabilities, have access to the core curriculum to the maximum
extent possible, and that they be removed from the general education
classroom only to the extent that their disability necessitates.

Consultant Teacher
• Support to general education classroom teachers and other staff
members who work directly with students with learning disabilities.
• A major advantage of this model is that the consultant teacher can work
with several teachers and thus indirectly serve many children.
 Educational Placement Alternatives
Separate classroom
• 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.

• In addition, poor work habits and inappropriate social behaviors make

some students with learning disabilities candidates for the separate
classroom, where distractions can be minimized and individual attention
stressed.
 References
EXCEPTIONAL CHILDREN: An Introduction to Special Education by William L.
Heward