Background: People with a learning disability can present with complex physical and social needs, and sometimes rely on touch for communication. Historically, touch-related staff guidance has been described as risk-averse, lacking an evidence base, control-orientated and potentially harmful. This project reviews local touch-related guidance from…

Spina bifida (SB) is a neural tube defect diagnosed before or at birth that is associated with a high incidence of math disability often without co-occurring difficulties in reading. SB provides an interesting population within which to examine the development of mathematical abilities and disability across the lifespan and in relation to the…

Discusses definitions of learning disabilities and strategies for identifying and accommodating learning disabled adults during job training. (SK)

This guide is intended to help the literacy practitioner in the identification of adults with learning disabilities. These adults have worked diligently for a year or more to improve comprehension skills, writing and spelling, or work skills, yet, have made little progress. The role of screening as only the first step in a process involving a…

Twenty-four adult patients who presented to a number of hospital services with complaints related to difficulty in hearing, understanding, remembering, or writing were examined for auditory perceptual disorders. Results support the desirability of examining auditory perceptual abilities in adults even though the tools available are designed…

Michael's Informal Test of Student Ability (MITOSA) is a diagnostic evaluative tool for adult students designed to test nine skills abilities in adult students functioning below a tenth grade level. The nine test sections are approximate reading level, understanding of basic math concepts and symbols, general thinking/reasoning ability, eye-hand…

People with Williams syndrome are extremely sociable, empathic, and expressive in communication. Some researchers suggest they may be especially sensitive to perceiving emotional expressions. We administered the Faces and Paralanguage subtests of the Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy Scale (DANVA2), a standardized measure of emotion…

The study examined the developmental lag hypothesis for learning disabilities by evaluating dichotic listening ability using both free recall and directed attention conditions in 24 learning disabled (LD) adults. Findings indicated LD adults showed similar deficits in lateralized selective auditory linguistic processing as children with LD. (DB)

This study evaluated the ability to process auditory temporal-envelope cues in six children with dyslexia and two groups of six each normal control children and adults. Children with dyslexia showed poorer reception of voicing, manner, and place of articulation for unprocessed speech and poorer reception of voicing for "speech-envelope noise."…

Twenty experienced Community Learning Disability Nurses (CLDNs) in Wales were interviewed. They described activities that addressed the health, social, psychological, and educational needs of people with learning disabilities. They reported high job satisfaction but also a need to better communicate their role to others. They desired a stronger…

A study of 172 male and 120 female college students with learning disabilities investigated interaction of gender and ability on cognitive, language, and achievement variables. Most measures were strongly related to general cognitive ability. Gender differences were found for general short-term memory on one cognitive measure and the…

This paper describes adult symptoms of Central Auditory Processing Disorder and provides strategies for dealing with this disability. Symptoms include talking or turning on the television louder than normal, interpreting words too literally, needing remarks repeated, having difficulty sounding out words, ignoring people, being unusually sensitive…

Eight participants with Asperger syndrome (AS) (ages 10-41) were assessed in the following areas: the pragmatics of language and communication; verbal and visual memory; visual-spatial abilities; and bimanual motor skills. Results confirmed the close similarity in the neuropsychologic profiles of non-verbal learning disabilities syndrome and AS.…

The booklet, fifth in a series, examines the assessment and remediation of reading difficulties in adults with learning disabilities. The section on assessment concerns touches upon reading recognition difficulties, and includes a list of questions for investigating auditory, tactile, and visual processes. Reading comprehension difficulties are…

This book describes the unique characteristics of visual-spatial learners and teaching techniques designed for this population. Following a quiz to identify visual-spatial learners, chapters address: (1) how visual-spatial learners think and the plight of being non-sequential; (2) the power of the right hemisphere, eye movement patterns, and…