LEARNING DISABILITY (LD)

Definition of Learning Disabilities:

Through the intermingling of many professions, a multidisciplinary

breadth is evolving in the field of LD. However, because so many diverse
professions are concerned, a confusion of terminology and seemingly
conflicting ideas pervade current discussions in the literature. Several
dimensions of the problem have been considered to define LD:

 Neurological dysfunction or brain impairment

 Uneven growth pattern
 Difficulty in academic and learning tasks
 Discrepancy between achievement and potentiality
 Definition by exclusion

Samuel Kirk’s definition (1962) “Learning disability refers to retardation,

disorder, or delayed development in one or more of the processes of speech,
language, reading, spelling, writing, or arithmetic resulting from a possible
cerebral dysfunction and/or emotional or behavioral disturbance and not
from mental retardation, sensory deprivation, or cultural or instructional
factors”.

Bateman (1965) defines children with specific learning disabilities as those

 who manifest an educationally significant discrepancy between their
estimated intellectual potential and actual level of performance related to
basic disorders in the learning processes, which may or may not be
accompanied by demonstrable CNS dysfunction and which are not secondary
to generalized mental retardation, educational or cultural deprivation, severe
emotional disturbance, or sensory loss.

Definition by Exclusion

Children with LD do not primarily fit into any other area of exceptionality i.e.
they are not primarily mentally retarded, emotionally disturbed, culturally
deprived, sensory handicapped.

Epidemiological Data

 National Advisory Committee on Handicapped Children (1968)- 1.0 to

3.0%
 National Advisory Committee on Dyslexia and related reading Disorders

(1969)- 15.0%
 Kass and Myklebust (1969)- 3.0 to 5.0%

 Meir (1971)- 15%

Etiology of LD

 There is no consensus on the specific causes of LD (Taylor, 1995).

This is probably because so many different types of children are given
 the label and there are many causes for the problems.

Behavioral model

 Most researchers believe that LD is related to central nervous system

deficit. The neurological deficit could be the result of genetic,
prenatal or postnatal factors.
 Environmental causes
 Developmental Causes
 Educational Causes

Reading disabilities are the result of an interplay of intrinsic and

extrinsic factors (Kamli, 1999). Intrinsic factors refer to internal to child
based processes, while extrinsic factors concern environmental
variables.

I. Intrinsic causes of reading disabilities

II. Extrinsic causes of reading disabilities

I. Intrinsic causes of reading disabilities

1. Genetic basis
2. Neurological basis
3. Visual based deficits
4. Attention based deficits
5. Language based deficits
II. Extrinsic causes of reading disabilities
1. Early literacy experience
2. Reading instruction

Classification of LD

Kirk and Gallagher (1989)

Identified 3 independent clusters of difficulties (syndromes) among
children and adolescents with LD:
 Primary presenting syndrome is a language disorder syndrome:

Characterized by problems in language comprehension and expression,

developmental word finding difficulty (dysnomia) and speech
discrimination problems – prevalence among LD: 40% - 60%.

 Articulatory and graphomotor dyscoordination syndrome:

Characterized by articulatory, writing and drawing difficulties (difficulties

in performing motor actions). Prevalence among LD: 10% - 40%.

 Visuospatial perceptual deficit:

Characterized by visual discrimination (e.g. differentiating similar visual

stimuli) and visual memory problems. Prevalence among LD: 5 – 15%.

Clement (1966), includes the following 10 frequently cited attributes:

 Hyperactivity

 Perceptual-motor impairments

 Emotional liability

 Co-ordination problems

 Disorders of attention

 Impulsivity

 Disorders of memory and thinking

 Academic difficulties

 Language deficits

Lerner (2000) recent list include the following learning and behavioral
characteristics of individuals with learning disabilities:
 Disorders or attention

 Poor motor abilities

 Psychological process deficits and information processing problems

 Lack of cognitive strategies needed for efficient learning

 Oral language difficulties

 Written language problems

 Social skills disorders

Two basic classification systems based on IQ achievement discrepancy

and neuropsychological profiles (cognitive processes) were not proved to
be useful.

Researches have focused directly on reading and on the individual

differences children display in learning to read.
1) Subtypes based on listening comprehension versus word recognition
problems
2) Dysphonetic, dyseidetic and alexic subgroups
3) Subjects based on nature of word recognition deficits
4) Reading styles global vs analytic learners
5) Deep, phonological and surface dyslexia
6) Rate disabled vs accuracy disabled readers
7) Catts (1999) comprehensive classification system

1) Subtype based on listening comprehension versus word recognition

problems:
Based on theory of reading called the simple view of reading (Gough et al.
1986, 1990), according to which reading comprehension can be thought
of as word recognition plus listening comprehension. It suggests that
children with RD can be divided into subgroups.
All the subgroups, i.e. dyslexia, language learning disability (LLD) and
hyperlexia have reading comprehension problems but for different
reasons:

 Inaccurate and / or slow decoding skills – dyslexia

 Language and cognitive deficits – hyperlexia (reading

comprehension is poor, but word recognition is good)
2) Dysphonetic, Dyseidetic and Alexic subgroups

 Boder (1973) based on misreading and/or misspelling.

 Dysphonetic subgroup: deficit in auditory analytic skills. They have

difficulty learning and using phonological route. These children display
phonetically inaccurate misreadings and misspellings e.g. pronouncing
block as book or spelling scramble as sleber.
 Dysseidetic readers: deficit in visual route. Words are misspelled misread

as phonetic renditions e.g. reading talc for talk or spelling laugh as leaf.
 Alexic subgroups: deficit in both phonetic and visual reading/spelling

skills

3) Subtypes based on nature of word recognition deficits

Word recognition is possible through two route i.e. visual and
phonological route. Words are recognized directly based on spelling /
orthographic patterns in visual route. Words are recognized indirectly by
using sound letter correspondence rules to decode the word in the
phonological route.

4) Reading styles
Carbo (1992) divides children into:
 Global learner / readers who learn to recognize words best through a

sight word approach (visual route).

 Analytic readers who learn to read by phonic method (phonological

route)
 This classification system is questioned as children need to have good
phonetic decoding skills to break the alphabetic code as well as good
orthographic skills to develop accurate and automatic word recognition.

5) Deep, phonological and surface

dyslexia
Deep dyslexia Phonological dyslexia Surface dyslexia
Difficulty in Difficulty in Difficulty in
 Phonetic decoding  Phonetic decoding.  Problems with
 Pronouncing  Pronouncing visual route.
nonwords (cannot nonwords.  Identified on the
be recognized by basis of their
visual route and misreading. E.g.
must be sounded reading chalk
out using sound (t∫a:k/) as chalk
letter (t∫a:lk/).
correspondence
rules).
 Semantic errors in
reading e.g. reading
“sun” for “moon”
 Visual errors (‘wife’
and ‘life’)
 Morphological
errors (misreading
prefixes and
suffixes)
 Greater facility
reorganizing
content words as
opposed to function
words (Thomson,
 1984).

6) Rate disabled vs accuracy disabled readers – Lovett (1984, 1988)

proposed 2 subtypes of RD:
 Accuracy disabled children – significant problems in decoding accuracy.

 Rate disabled children – marked deficit in reading rate despite grade

appropriate decoding ability.

Combining subtypes in research and practice – Catts (1999) gave a

comprehensive classification system.
Types of reading problems
 Visual discrimination

 Auditory discrimination

 Sound blending

 Memory skill

 Letter and word reversals

 Word analysis skills

 Sight words

 Literal Comprehension skills

COGNITION IN LD

Short-term memory

 The exact nature of problems with STM is somewhat obscure in LD

 students (Cooney and Swanson, 1987).

 Torgesen and Goldman (1977) studied lip movements of children during

memorizing tasks. LD children were found to exhibit fewer lip

movements than the NLD students. To the extent that these lip
movements reflect the quantity of rehearsal, these data support a
rehearsal-deficiency hypothesis.
 Swanson (1983c) found that LD children rarely reported the use of an
organizational strategy when they were required to rehearse several
items. He reasoned that the problem was a failure to perform elaborative
processing of each word. Elaborative processing was defined as
processing that goes beyond the initial level of analysis to include more
sophisticated features of the words and ultimately the comparison of
these features with others in the list.
 Another major source of STM processing difficulty has been related to
LDs children’s lack/inefficient use of a phonological code (sound
representation).

Long-term memory
Numerous studies have also shown that LD children are less skilled than
NLD peers in the use of rehearsal strategies used to store information in
the LTM (Bauer, 1977a,b, 1979; Traver et al., 1976; Torgesen and
Goldman, 1977).
 Swason (1984b, 1987e) - LTM deficits may arise from failure to integrate

visual and verbal memory traces of visually presented stimuli at the time
of storage or retrieval (due to semantic memory limitations).
Some investigators suggested that LD children’s LTM is intact, but the strategies necessary
to gain access to this information are impaired.

Perceptual and perceptual motor behavior & LD:

◦ A majority of the research published prior to 1976 was concerned
with perceptual motor behavior of brain injured and / or reading
disabled children, and little experimental research dealt directly with
memory difficulties (Hallahan and Cruickshank, 1973).

◦ “ … children who have auditory verbal comprehension disabilities

resulting from CNS dysfunction hear but do not understand what is
said …. Language disabilities of this type have been described in both
children and adults and have been designated as receptive aphasia,
sensory aphasia, auditory verbal agnosia or word deafness … These
disabilities should be differentiated from the language deficits
resulting from deafness or mental retardation”. (Johnson and
Mykelbust, 1976, 74).

◦ Measures of children’s ability to accurately interpret others’

nonverbal communication (e.g. smiling, eye contact etc., ) thus
provide an important way to measure their social perception and
cognition.

Cognitive strategies (Wong, 1991):

 LD adolescents are found to have ineffective thinking processes.
Effective approaches cue students to use –
– e.g. paraphrasing, imaging, predicting, setting priorities.

 Thinking behaviors related to reflecting on and evaluating the way a task

is being approached and accomplished.

 This prompts students to use metacognitive processes involved in

analyzing the task and setting goals, monitoring the problem solving
process during its implementation, and reviewing or checking to
determine whether/not goals were met.

Visual processes in LD – Willows (1991)

◦ It focuses on visual perception and visual memory abilities of

individuals who have difficulties in processing written language
manifested in the areas of reading, spelling, handwriting and written
composition.
◦ Visual processing deficits are considered to be potential contributing
factors in written language disabilities.

Visual recognition memory

 Reading disabled children were less accurate and slower in their visual
recognition performance (Willows et al. 1988; Lyle and Goyen, 1975).

Reproduction from visual memory

 Poor readers performed as well as normals in ST and LTM of Hebrew

letters and words – symbols unfamiliar to both groups (Vellutino et al.

1977).

 Disabled and normal readers may differ in draw unfamiliar visual

patterns from memory task (Lyle, 1968).

LANGUAGE DEFICITS in LD

Characteristics of language learning disabilities in school-age children

(Shames and Wiig, 1982)

 Early language delay or early histories of speech or language problems

are important signals of potential language – learning disabilities

(Ingram, 1970; and Mason, 1976).

Academic achievement:

Profiles of academic underachievement in children with otherwise

normal potential for learning may be used to identify children at risk for
language disabilities. Many children with language learning disabilities
show one of two academic achievement patterns (Rourke, 1975).

# Reading and spelling achievement are below grade level, while

arithmetic achievement is at/above grade level expectations.
 # Academic achievement in reading, spelling and arithmetic are
uniformly below grade and intellectual level expectations.

Problems in interpersonal communication

 Demonstrated in everyday situations and in school activities.

 They typically have difficulties in following oral directions in
classroom and in interpreting and answering wh-questions accurately
(Little, 1978; Schwartz and Murphy, 1975).

 They may not be capable of adapting their language and

communication styles to listener’s needs/to fit the interpersonal context
(Bryan, 1978).

 They are less able to communicate descriptive information about

pictures (Snyder, 1979) and are delayed in achieving communication
competence (Shames and Wiig, 1982).

Deficits in knowledge of word meanings (Semantics)

# Delays in acquisition of word meaning may persist into

adolescence if language intervention and remediation is not provided.

# They may have difficulty with multiple meaning words, verbs,

adjectives, adverbs and prepositions.
 # Poor interpretation of alternative meanings of sentences with
dual meaning words (Wiig, Semel and Abele, 1981) has been reported e.g.
“Chickens ready to eat” (ambiguous sentences).

Deficits in knowledge of word formation rules (morphology)

# Children with LD may ignore hard to hear parts of words, such as

word endings, unstressed words, phrases and parts of clauses, when
listening to and interpreting spoken language (Golick, 1976).

# They focus on and remember words in phrases, clauses,

sentences and paragraphs which stand out because of stress or high
information content.

# The word endings used for inflection and derivation may cause
special problems because of their short duration and low intensity in
running speech.

 Phonological conditioning is the process by which the choice of

inflectional word endings is governed by nature of final speech sound in

the immediately preceding word.

 The major difficulties experienced by all children with LD is in acquiring

the phonological conditioning rules for the –ez and –ed variations of the
inflectional word endings (noun plurals ending in /iz/, and past tense of
 regular verbs ending in /id/).

Deficits in knowledge of sentence formation rules (syntax).

 LD children will have trouble learning sentence transformations like

the passive in which the usual order of presentation of agent action
object is altered, interrupted, or reversed.

 These delays are reflected in both interpreting spoken language and

formulating sentences.

 The syntactic deficits persist into adolescence and young adulthood if

they remain untreated (Wiig & Semel, 1976, 1980).

 The adolescents with LD have difficulty in understanding, remembering

and using structurally complex sentences.

 Their greatest difficulties occurred when sentences were syntactically

well-formed but violated word-selection rules, as in “colorless green

ideas sleep furiously” or when they contained a random word string.
“Not in a tree to the lake with”.

Word finding difficulties (“dysnomia”) in children with LD

 Understanding and recognition of intended words present. But they are

unable to retrieve the intended word on command. The recurrent search

 for specific words often results in characteristic speech patterns (Wiig
and Semel, 1980).

Evidence of dysnomia in LD

 Children (8-10 years) and adolescents with diagnosed dyslexia

made word substitution errors / circumlocutions and word
association errors compared to nondyslexic children/academic
achievers of the same age (Denckla & Rudel, 1976; White, 1979).

 German (1979) reported that children (8-11 year old) with LD had
word finding difficulties with relatively low frequency words and
tasks involving open-ended questions. Her findings of a related
study showed that LD children used 3 significant word substitution
patterns.
 Strongest pattern - intended word substituted by a word of less
complexity in meaning and with greater range of application. E.g.
rein-string.
 Intended word was substituted by functionally descriptive word e.g.
shelf-book holder.
 Weakest pattern – initially, sounds were said and discarded,
followed by accurate naming e.g. comb – ‘be, be’, comb”.

Terminological issues
 The term “Dyslexia” is widely used to refer to children whose reading
problems reflect developmental language impairment.

The term specific reading disabled is sometimes used to refer to these

children.

A problem with this term however, is that it places emphasis on written

language deficits rather than the more general language deficits
associated with the disorder.

The most appropriate label may be language learning disabled. This label
means that it is first and foremost a language disorder rather than just a
reading disorder.

A dyslexic is a child who is normal/above at least in nonverbal IQ, two

years behind the reading achievement and with a reading disability that
is not explainable primarily by social, economic, motivation, or emotional
factors (Perfetti, 1985).

ASSESSMENT OF LD

READING: Informal assessment of reading disability

Areas of informal reading assessment:

 Reading rate
 Reading accuracy
 Word recognition
 Reading comprehension
 Vocabulary, and
 Spelling

Formal assessment of reading and spelling disorders

Assessment area: Phonemic awareness – Tests (Torgesen, 1999)

The Rosner test of auditory analysis (Rosner, 1975) consists 13 items, oldest
test of phonemic awareness (for grade K-5th)

Lindamood auditory conceptualization test (Lindamood and Lindamood,

1979). Requires manipulation of colored blocks to indicate number, identity
and order of phonemes in a series of nonsense words. Reflects decoding skills
(For grades K-6 and 7th grade to adulthood).

 Test of phonological awareness (Torgesen & Bryant, 1993) contains 2

subtests based on sound comparison activities, group administered test
(For kindergarten and first grade).
 Yopp-Singer test of phoneme segmentation (Yopp, 1995) (For
kindergarten & I-grade children); consists of 22 items; requires child to
 pronounce individual phonemes in words.
 The phonological awareness test (Robertson & Salter, 1995). (For
kindergarten through 5th grade): Consists of 6 different subtests to
assess abilities like segmentation, blending etc.
 The comprehensive test of phonological processes in reading (Wagner &
Torgesen, 1997) (from K.G. to high school) consist of sound comparison
sub-tests, phoneme blending and segmentation subtests, rapid naming
ability, short term memory for phonological information tests.

Assessment area: Word recognition

Tests of sight word reading ability:

Assessed using word identification subtest of Woodcock Reading Mastery.

Test-Revised (Woodcock, 1987) and the reading subtest of the wide range
achievement test-3 (Wilkinson, 1995).

The words on these lists increase in complexity and length and decrease in
frequency of occurrence in the English language.

 Tests of phonetic decoding ability

Best assessed using non-words to minimize the use of sight reading
e.g. for decoding test using non-words is the word attack subtest on
the Woodcock reading mastery test revised (Woodcock, 1987).

 Tests of word recognition fluency

 The Gray Oral reading test – 3rd edition (GORT-3) (Wiederholt & Bryant,
1992) consists of 13 reading passages of increasing difficulty, with 5
comprehension questions for each passage.

The amount of time the child requires to orally read the passage is
documented.

The passage score reflects the combination of reading speed and

accuracy, and typical norm reference comparisons are available for this
score. But, this test is too difficult for beginners and disabled readers
through 2nd grade (Torgesen, 1999).

 To address the difficulty with GORT-3, Torgesen and Wagner (1997),

developed the test of word reading efficiency and the nonword reading
efficiency test to assess fluency and accuracy in word recognition test.

 It comprises list of words/non-words of increasing complexity. Child is

asked to read as many words as he can in 45 secs. The score is the

average number of words read on both tests.

NARRATIVE SCHEMA KNOWLEDGE

It is tested in 2 ways (1) use of comprehension based measures like

asking questions about a story or (2) productive measures such as requiring
the student to generate a story (Westby, 1999).

Westby, Tough (1981) lists 4 types of questions for assessing child’s

comprehension of a narrative:

 Reporting: What was the boy doing here? What happened here?

 Projecting: What does the boy feel? What did he say to big frog? What is

the frog thinking?

 Reasoning – Why is the frog thinking that? Why does the boy feel angry?

Why did the tree fall down?

 Predicting: What will happen next? What will the big frog do now?
(Westby, 1999).

• Another way to assess narrative skills: Give a wordless picture book and

ask the child to tell you a story about the book or ask the students to tell a
story about an event in their lives or to make up a story without any
visual prompts (Westby, 1999).

Differential diagnosis of dyslexia Co-occurring with CAPD

1) Individuals with CAPD have normal intelligence and hearing acuity but are
unable to process auditory information effectively, due to dysfunction in
 lower / higher level cortical processes.

It causes difficulties in detection, interpretation and categorization of sounds

(Schow & Nervonne, 1996).

CAPD should be ruled out by an audiologist in children who exhibit signs of

language based LD/reading and/or spelling disorders.

2) Attention deficit disorder / ADHD

3) Co-occurrence of dyslexia with CAPD and ADD/ADHD

Children should be screened for phonological awareness skills during
pre-kg, and KG years.
Assessment should focus on word recognition and word comprehension
and on skills necessary to recognize and comprehend language.

These areas include reading and listening comprehension, vocabulary

testing, decoding, spelling, reading speed, dependency on context and
metacognition. In addition, a comprehensive history should be taken
(Betry)

Written language and learning disabilities

 Written language is considered to be one of the highest forms of

language.
 Abilities and experiences in listening, speaking and reading usually

precede the development of writing skills.

 Difficulties in any of these other language areas will certainly interfere

with the acquisition of the written form of language (Johnson and

Myklebust, 1967).

 Children with various reading problems for e.g. invariably experience

spelling disabilities.

II. Spelling Assessment

 The ability to spell requires auditory and visual discrimination, memory,

sequentialization, analysis and synthesis and the integration of all these

skills (Johnson and Myklebust, 1967).

Phonics ability

• Spelling skill involves the ability to transpose sounds (phonemes) to letters

(graphemes) accurately.

• Many LD children have great difficulty in sound symbol association.

• They have difficulties in auditory memory, auditory discrimination and

 application of various phonic generalizations to spelling words.

• Child who incorrectly spells “cat” as “cad” or “sad” as “sat” will require
remedial work in basic auditory perception skills + graphemic component
of each sound.

# Bureckner and Bond (1955) suggest that the emphasis with poor spellers
should first be to learn to associate sounds of single letters and their
written symbols and then proceed to letter and phonogram
combinations.

# Many children omit entire sound units from various words because of
auditory perception difficulties (e.g. rember for “remember”). Some
others add unnecessary sound units (e.g. “booker” for “book”).

# Literal transformation of what is heard into written form is also

commonly observed. E.g. “exciting” as “icsiting” or “mystery” as “mistree”.

# These children will require help in building adequate visual imagery for
words and in applying phonic generalizations.

# Visual memory of either individual letters / the sequential order of

letters in words, also affects spelling ability.

# The child who has trouble revisualizing letters in a word would make
gross errors in spelling since the child can recall very little visually about
the word.
# Sometimes, the correct order of the letters is not recalled e.g. “girl” as
“gril” or “mother” as ‘mother’ i.e. visual sequential memory deficits.

# Mnemonic devices for remembering spelling patterns can be used by

some children with spelling disabilities. 2 illustration of mnemonic aids
are:

# ‘Market’ is ‘mark’ with ‘et’ at the end. ‘City’ is ‘it’ a ‘c’ at beginning and a
‘y’ at the end.

Metalinguistic Abilities in Children with Developmental Dyslexia:

Implications for Reading and Writing (Priya, 2009) dissertation

Formal spelling assessment:

The Test of Written Spelling-2 (Larsen and Hammill, 1986):

# Norm-referenced test designed for a use with students in grades 1
through 8.
# The test uses a dictation format to assess the child’s spelling.
# Assesses the spelling of 50 predictable words and 50 unpredictable,
words.
# Scores can be converted to grade equivalents and spelling ages along with
spelling quotient.

Diagnostic Screening Test: Spelling (Gnagey, 1983)

# It measures spelling proficiency in 3 categories: phonics (rule spelling),
sight spelling (spelling from memory), and total spelling ability.
# Used with students with children in grades 1 through 12.
# It can be administered on small groups, however, individual
administration is recommended because it yields verbal and written
spelling scores as well as further diagnostic information concerning the
student’s gross and sequential memory abilities.
# The test has 2 forms (A and B).

Expression of ideas

# Many children can orally express ideas but have in ability to organize
thoughts into the proper / logical form for written communication.

# Some LD children who have had extensive and appropriate input

experiences but are still unable to communicate in writing.

Inadequate vocabulary

# Leading to inadequate written expression: Some LD children have poor

spoken and written language vocabularies because of the lack of various
experiences to impoverished oral language backgrounds.
Syntax and grammar

# Some of the more frequent written syntax errors are word omission,
 distorted word order; incorrect verb and pronoun usage, incorrect word
endings and lack of punctuation (Myklebust, 1967).

# The rules of grammar are also very confusing to many LD children.

# Learning the parts of speech, tenses and the rules of usage is difficult for
the child with memory / conceptualization deficits.

ASSESSMENT OF WRITING SKILLS

# The composing problems of students with LD go beyond

mechanical ones such as spelling, punctuation and grammar
(Poteet, 1978; Houck and Billingsley, 1989) to include higher order
cognitive and metacognitive problems (Newcomer and
Barenbraum, 1991).

# Specifically, they lack knowledge of the writing process and

metacognition about writing, such as what writing is about, its
purpose and what constitutes a good writer (Englert and Thomas,
1987; Graham, Schwartz and MacArthur, 1993; Wong, Wong and
Blenkinsop, 1989).

Formal assessment of writing / composing skills (By Pro-Ed Publishers)

# Test of written language (TOWL) (for elementary school student)

 # Test of adolescent language (TOAL) (for high school children)

# Writing skills test (Thomas, 1961)

# Picture story language test (Myklebust, 1965)

Informal assessment of writing: Procedure:

# Present the student with 5-8 pictures of his/her hobby. Ask him to
choose one of the pictures about which he is write a paragraph of 8
sentences.

In analyzing the writing, note the following:

Disproportionate amount of time taken to produce the desired

amount of writing.

# Monotonous and unvarying format of the sentences

# Paucity of vocabulary
# Poor spelling
# Occasional grammatical and punctuation errors
# Ambiguous sentences / parts of sentences

Indian studies for written language

Test for writing in Hindi (Kiran, 1994)

Test for writing in Kannada (Yeshoda, 1994)

Tool for screening children with writing disorders (ToSC-WD; Shanbal,

2003)
 Written language skills in children with dyslexia (Sheetal, 2010)

ARITHMETIC LEARNING DISABILITIES:

# Dyscalculia definition: (Dys + L. Calculo, to add): Acalculia is the inability

to use mathematical symbols; in a less severe form, it is often referred to
as dyscalculia (Nice Harryman & Krshed).

# Arithmetic deficiencies include problems with measurement decimals,

fractions and percentages in addition to computational difficulties
(Bryant and Kass, 1972).

Types of arithmetic disabilities (AD)

 Shape discrimination

 Set and numbers

 Counting

 Place value

 Measurements

 Time telling

 Size discrimination

 One to one correspondence

 Auditory visual association

 Computational skills
  Monetary value

 Quantitative language

Sl Language Name of the test Age Skills

No. range
1 Linguistic profile test – 6y-15y -Phonology
Dr.Prathibha Karanth (1980) -Semantics
-Syntax
-Discourse
2 Reading acquisition profile Grade III Language
in Kannada (RAP-K) to Grade Metaphonology
Dr.K.S.Prema VII Reading
(8 years- Writing
KANNADA 12 years) Knowledge of orthrographic
principles
Reading comprehension
3 Oral Reading test in Kannada 11yrs- Word reading speed and
Bai,J. 1958 accuracy
4 Reading readiness test (Devi, 3-6.6yrs Auditory and visual
D. 1978) discrimination
Vocabulary
5 Diagnostic reading test Primary -Automaticity
(Purushothama, 1991) grade -Orthrographic rules
-Sequential processing
skills in reading.
6 Identification and 7-11yrs
assessment of reading
disability in children : An
information processing
approach (Jayaram, J. 1997)
7 Kannada language test 3-7yrs Semantics and
Syntax
8 KANNADA Frame work for testing Grade III *Word reading
Kannada reading on the *Syllable reading
basis of automaticity, rules *Auditory sequential
of orthrography and memory
sequential processing *Visual sequential memory
*Raven’s progressive
matrices
*Memory for designs
 9 Screening Emergent Pre- Emergent language,
Language and Literacy Skills school Phonological awareness
(SELL), Prema, (2006) 3-6 years (rhyming, oddity, syllable
and phoneme manipulation)
and Print awareness
10 Computerized Linguistic Pre- Comprehension and
Profile (CLIPS, Anitha & school Expression
Prema, 2008)
Sl. Language Name of the test Age- Skills
No range
1 Test for reading and metaphonological 3-5yrs *Semantics
skills *Syntax
MALAYALAM
2 Checklist for screening language based 3-5yrs *Rhyming and
learning disability in children (Che – SLR) Alliteration
Swaroopa (2001) -Verbal memory
-Word retrieval
-Rapid naming
-Comprehension of
language
-Speech production
-Language
expression
-Listening skills
-Non-verbal
limitation
-Other important
factors

Sl Language Test name Age range Skills

No.
1 Early reading skills Grade I-VIII -Alphabets
Monika Loomba (1991) 6-13 years -Visual discrimination
-Auditory discrimination
-Phoneme-Grapheme
correspondence
-Structural analysis
-Close reading
-Oral reading
2 ENGLISH Pre-school language Pre-school -Matching perception
assessment instrument -Selective analysis of
Marian Blank perception
Susan. A. Rose -Reordering perception
Laura. J. Berlin (1978) -Reasoning about
 perception
3 Test of phonological
awareness skills
4 An observational Pre-school -Written language
assessment checklist – awareness
children’s early literacy -Environmental print
development awareness
Justice (2002) -Book handling knowledge
5 Early identification of KG or -Speech sound awareness
language-based reading beginning of 1st -Verbal memory
disabilities : A checklist grade -Spech/production
Catts (1997) perception
-Comprehension
-Expressive language
-Other important factors
6 Pre-school SIFTER Pre-school -Pre-academics
(Screening instrument -Attention
for targeting educational -Communication
risk in pre-school -Class participation
children -Social behavior
7 Screening checklist for Polar Questions
CAP (SCAP)
Yathiraj & Mascarenhas
(2002)
8 Quick neurological Above 11yrs
screening test (QNST)
Margaret Mutti. M. A.,
Harold. M. Sterling,
Norma. V. Spalding ()
9 Children with Reading Grade I - VII -Rhyme recognition
disability: A remedial -Syllable reversal
manual on -Syllable deletion
metaphonological skills -Syllable oddity(W)
in Kannada -Syllable oddity(NW)
-Phoneme deletion
-Phoneme oddity(NW)
10 Dyslexia assessment Grade I-V -Alphabet test
profile for Indian -Shape copying
children (DAPIC) -Writing
Kuppuraj.S. (2009) -Reading test
-Non-word reading test
-Alliteration test
-Rhyming test
-word repetition
-Non-word repetition
 -Rapid naming
-Sound discrimination
11 Gray Oral Reading Tests Reading

12 ABecedarian reading KG, 1st grade Cognitive elements:

assessment Decoding
Sebastian Wren & Cipher Knowledge
Jennifer Watts (2002) Lexical Knowledge
Phoneme Awareness
Knowledge of Alphabetic
Principle
Letter Knowledge
Semantics (Vocabulary and
Morphology)
Phonological Awareness
Subtests:
Letter knowledge
Rhyming perception
Identity perception
Rhyming production
Identity production
First sounds
Last sounds
Phoneme segmentation
Alphabetic Principle
Vocabulary Production
Vocabulary Antonyms
Vocabulary Synonyms
Decoding Fluency
Decoding Irregular Words
Decoding Regular Words
13 One minute reader Assessment: Fluency,
Elementary – Vocabulary,
5th grade Comprehension
Intervention:
beginning
readers to
adults
14 Signs for sounds Assmt: 1st-3rd Phonemic awareness,
grade Phonics
Intrvtn: 1st-8th
grade
Word warm-ups Assmt:1st-3rd Phonemic awareness,
grade Phonics,
Intrvtn: 1st-8th Fluency
 grade
15 Read naturally GATE Assmt:1st grade Phonemic awareness,
(Group and tutoring Intrvtn: 1st-2nd Phonics,
edition grade Fluency,
ENGLISH Vocabulary,
Comprehension
16 Read naturally ME Assmt:1st-8th Phonics,
(Masters edition) grade Fluency,
Intrvtn:1st Vocabulary,
grade-adults Comprehension
17 Read naturally SE Assmt:1st-8th Phonics,
(Software edition) grade Fluency,
Intrvtn:1st Vocabulary,
grade-adults Comprehension
18 Take aim! At vocabulary Assmt:4th- 5th Fluency,
grade Vocabulary,
Intrvtn: 4th Comprehension
grade-adults
19 Reading Fluency KG-8th grade Assessment passages
Benchmark Assessor Letter naming fluency.
(RFBA)
20 Reading Fluency 1st-8th grade Assessment passages
Progress Monitor
Candyce Ihnot & Tom
Ihnot, Read Naturally,
Inc.(1991)
21 Quick phonics screener KG-12th grade Letter Names & Sounds
Jan Hasbrouck, VC & CVC
Beginning- & Ending-
Consonant Digraphs
CVCC & CCVC
Silent e
R-controlled Vowels
Advanced Consonant
Sounds, Silent Consonants,
& Consonant Digraphs
Vowel Digraphs &
Diphthongs
Two Syllables, Common
Prefixes, & Suffixes
Three Syllables & Four
Syllables
22 Reading aptitude 2nd-10th grade Phonics
assessment test Comprehension
23 Learning disability Questionnaire
 screening quiz
24 Reading Ability 5yrs-18.5yrs Word recognition
ENGLISH Screening Test from Reading comprehension
Child Development
Institute
25 Red Flag Reading 1st-8th grade Checks for misreading of
Screening words, skipped words,
substituted words, word
reversals, added words, self
corrections
26 Phonics worksheets and Children Phonemic awareness,
reading tests Alphabetic
Sight words

Language Age range Skills

Pre-school -Phonology
-Semantics
3-7yrs -Syntax
-Discourse
Primary grade Language
Metaphonology
7-11yrs Reading
KANNADA Writing
Grade III Knowledge of orthrographic principles
Reading comprehension
11yrs Word reading speed and accuracy
Auditory and visual discrimination
6y-15y Vocabulary
-Automaticity
Grade III-VII -Orthrographic rules
-Sequential processing
skills in reading.
Semantics and
Syntax
 3-5yrs -Semantics
-Syntax
-Rhyming and Alliteration
MALAYALAM -Verbal memory
-Word retrieval
-Rapid naming
-Comprehension of language
-Speech production
-Language expression
-Listening skills
-Non-verbal limitation
-Other important factors
Pre-school -Alphabets
-Visual discrimination
KG to beginning of 1st grade -Auditory discrimination
-Phoneme-Grapheme correspondence
KG to 1st grade -Structural analysis
-Close reading
5-18.5yrs -Oral reading
-Matching perception
Grade I-VII -Selective analysis of perception
-Reordering perception
Grade I-V -Reasoning about perception
ENGLISH -Written language awareness
2nd – 10th grade -Environmental print awareness
-Book handling knowledge
1st-8th grade -Speech sound awareness
-Verbal memory
Above 11yrs -Spech/production perception
-Comprehension
Assmnt: -Expressive language
th
Elementary – 5 grade -Other important factors
-Pre-academics
st rd
1 - 3 grade -Attention
-Communication
1st grade -Class participation
-Social behavior
1st-8th grade Polar Questions
-Rhyme recognition
4th-5th grade -Syllable reversal
-Syllable deletion
Intrvtn: -Syllable oddity(W)
Beginning readers to adults -Syllable oddity(NW)
-Phoneme deletion
st th
1 - 8 grade -Phoneme oddity(NW)
 -Alphabet test
st nd
1 - 2 grade -Shape copying
-Writing
1st grade- adults -Reading test
-Non-word reading test
4th grade-adults -Alliteration test
-Rhyming test
KG - 12th grade -word repetition
-Non-word repetition
-Rapid naming
-Sound discrimination
Reading
Cognitive elements: Decoding
Cipher Knowledge
Lexical Knowledge
Phoneme Awareness
Knowledge of Alphabetic Principle
Letter Knowledge
Semantics (Vocabulary and Morphology)
Phonological Awareness
Subtests:
Letter knowledge
Rhyming perception
Identity perception
Rhyming production
Identity production
First sounds
Last sounds
Phoneme segmentation
Alphabetic Principle
Vocabulary Production
Vocabulary Antonyms
Vocabulary Synonyms
Decoding Fluency
Decoding Irregular Words
Decoding Regular Words
Fluency,
Vocabulary,
Comprehension
Phonemic awareness,
Phonics
Phonemic awareness,
Phonics,
Fluency
Phonemic awareness,
Phonics,
Fluency,
Vocabulary,
Comprehension
Phonics,
Fluency,
Vocabulary,
Comprehension
Phonics,
Fluency,
Vocabulary,
Comprehension
Fluency,
Vocabulary,
Comprehension
Assessment passages
Letter naming fluency.
Assessment passages
Letter Names & Sounds
VC & CVC
Beginning- & Ending-Consonant Digraphs
CVCC & CCVC
Silent e
R-controlled Vowels
Advanced Consonant Sounds, Silent
Consonants, & Consonant Digraphs
Vowel Digraphs & Diphthongs
Two Syllables, Common Prefixes, & Suffixes
Three Syllables & Four Syllables
Phonics
Comprehension
Questionnaire
Word recognition
Reading comprehension
Checks for misreading of words, skipped
words, substituted words, word reversals,
added words, self corrections
Phonemic awareness,
Alphabetic
Sight words