What are they?

Learning Difficulties are a group of disorders involving significant difficulties in the acquisition and use of listening, speaking, reading, writing, reasoning or mathematical abilities. These disorders are specific to the individual (and vary significantly between individuals) and are presumed to be due to Central Nervous System Dysfunction.

Even though a learning disability may occur in conjunction with other handicapping conditions (e.g. sensory impairment, intellectual impairment, social and emotional disturbance) or environmental influences (e.g. cultural differences, insufficient/inappropriate instruction), it is not the direct result of those conditions or influences.

What are the features of it?

Most learning difficulties are categorised as verbal or non-verbal learning difficulties. People with verbal learning disabilities have difficulty with words - both spoken and written.

Verbal - Some people with verbal learning disabilities may be able to read or write adequately but have trouble with other aspects of language. For example, they may be able to sound out a sentence or paragraph perfectly (thus reading well), but they can't 'make sense' of what they're reading (such as forming a mental picture of the situation they read about).

Non-verbal - Some people have trouble with the act of writing, as their brains struggles to coordinate the many simultaneous tasks required - from moving their hand to form letter shapes to remembering the correct grammar required in a sentence. People with nonverbal learning disabilities may have difficulty processing what they see, such as having trouble making sense of visual details like numbers on a blackboard (e.g. confusing the '+' for '-' in Maths). As a result, abstract concepts like fractions may be difficult to master for people with nonverbal learning disabilities.

Common challenges experienced by those with Learning Difficulties:

• Slow vocabulary growth, often unable to find the right word.
• Difficulty rhyming words.
• Trouble learning numbers, alphabet, days of the week, colors, shapes.
• Extremely restless and easily distracted.
• Trouble interacting with peers.
• Difficulty following directions or routines.
• Fine motor skills slow to develop.
• Transposes number sequences and confuses arithmetic signs (+, -, x, /, =).
• Slow to remember facts.
• Slow to learn new skills, relying heavily on memory.
• Impulsive, difficulty planning.
• Poor pencil grip and subsequent handwriting.
• Trouble learning to tell the time.
• Poor coordination, unaware of physical surroundings.
• Unable to complete tasks within given time frames.
• Reverses letters or confuses words.

Management strategies that support the child with Learning Difficulties (at preschool, school or home):

• Use of learning aids (including electronic spellers and dictionaries, word processors, talking calculators, books on tape).
• Carefully planned lessons for small learning increments.
• Scripted lesson plans.

Occupational Therapy approaches and activities that can support the individual or their carers include:

• Use a multi-sensory approach to learning (using as many different senses as possible such as seeing, listening, doing and speaking).
• Providing visual strategies and instructions.
• Sequencing tasks (or components within a task) using visual cues.
• Visual strategies to assist with reading, spelling and task completion.
• Modelling visually - not just verbally, when providing instructions.
• Specifically instructing problem solving to known difficulties, rather than expecting the individual to transfer problem solving skills from one situation to another.
• Story 'mapping (planning on paper) before writing (to assist with idea generation and story flow).
• Strategies to foster independence in learning, as well as self care, time management, and resource management.

Speech Pathology approaches and activities that can support the individual or their carers include:

• Use a multi-sensory approach to learning (using as many different senses as possible, such as seeing, listening, doing and speaking).
• Helping the family and the education setting to use visual strategies – for example, picture time-tables and picture sequences to help follow instructions.
• Providing information to those involved with the child about exactly at what level of the understanding the child is at, so that the language used is at an appropriate level for the child to understand.
• Setting up with parents/carers an individualised plan with small achievable speech and language goals to help develop the child's speech and language skills.
• Providing the family with strategies, activities and ideas that can be used during the day to help develop the child's speech and language difficulties.
• Providing the child with strategies to manage and situations when they don't understand (e.g. teaching them to put up their hands when they don't understand, teaching some standard questions to ask when needed, etc.).
• Liaising and working with educational staff to provide information to be incorporated an education plan and/or implement ideas/suggestions, activities to help improve the child's speech and language skills and ability to access to the curriculum.