Special Learning Difficulties (SLDs) Characteristics

Specific Learning Difficulties are specific to the individual, with symptoms, learning abilities, learning styles and academic achievements varying from student to student.

What is a Specific Learning Difficulty (SLDs)?

Specific Learning Difficulties (SLDs) can impact across the educational and daily life spectrums. SLDs are neurological in nature, can (but not always) be hereditary, and affects the learning and processing of information. Specific Learning Difficulties can significantly impact on acquiring new academic skills and cover a range of areas of difficulty including dyslexia (reading, spelling, writing), dyscalculia (understanding of maths concepts) and dysgraphia (spelling, handwriting, written expression), and attention and concentration difficulties – Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

Specific Learning Difficulties are specific to the individual, with symptoms, learning abilities, learning styles and academic achievements varying from student to student. Students with learning difficulties benefit from an individual approach to learning intervention strategies.

Specific Learning Difficulties (SLDs) Characteristics

Specific Learning Difficulties may be presented in different ways, or co-exist with other areas of difficulty.
Some common SLD characteristics include:  

  • Memory difficulties.
  • Organisational difficulties.
  • Writing difficulties.
  • Visual processing difficulties.
  • Reading difficulties.
  • Auditory processing difficulties.
  • Time management difficulties.
  • Sensory distraction: an inability to screen out extraneous visual or auditory stimuli.
  • Sensory overload: a heightened sensitivity to visual stimuli and sound; an inability to cope with busy environments.

Sourced from British Dyslexia Association                                                                     

What is a Specific Learning Disorder?                                                 

  • Affects a person’s ability to “receive, store, process, retrieve, or communicate information (Cortiolla & Horowitz, 2014)
  • Brain based disorder linked to neurological differences in brain structure
  • Can manifest in one of more areas of academic achievement
  • A Specific Learning Difficulty can be specific with a student presenting with deficits in reading and writing, but performing at an average or above average level in maths and oral language
  • An outstanding feature of a Specific Learning Difficulty is that the student’s underachievement is unexpected
  • Prevalence estimated to be between 5-15% of students
  • Greatly benefit from the use of appropriate adaptions, accommodations, and compensatory strategies.

Sourced from Pearson Clinical https://www.pearsonclinical.com.au

What are the common features of learning difficulties?

Verbal or Non-verbal learning difficulties:

Verbal:

  • Difficulty with both spoken and written words.
  • Some people with verbal learning disabilities may be able to read or write adequately but have trouble with other aspects of language (e.g. they may be able to sound out a sentence or paragraph perfectly (thus reading well), but they can’t ‘make sense’ of what they are reading or form a mental picture of the situation they have read about).

Non-verbal:

  • Difficulty with the act of writing because the brain struggles to coordinate the many simultaneous tasks required (e.g. from moving their hand to form letter shapes to remembering the correct grammar required in a sentence).
  • Difficulty processing what they see (e.g. having trouble making sense of visual details like numbers on a blackboard, confusing the ‘+’ for ‘-‘in Maths).
  • Difficulties understanding abstract concepts such as fractions.

Common difficulties often (but not always) experienced by the child with learning difficulties:

  • Slow vocabulary growth, often unable to find the right word.
  • Difficulty rhyming words.
  • Trouble learning numbers, alphabet, days of the week, colours and shapes.
  • Extremely restless and easily distracted.
  • Trouble interacting with peers.
  • Difficulty following directions or routines.
  • Fine motor skills are 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 and has difficulty planning
  • Poor pencil grip and subsequent handwriting.
  • Trouble learning to tell the time.
  • Poor coordination and tends to appear 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 and/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.
  • Individual Learning Plans

Sourced from Kid Sense https://childdevelopment.com.au/areas-of concern/diagnoses/learning-difficulties/

If you or your child’s school have concerns about your child’s academic progress and/or learning difficulties, Purple Giraffe Psychology would be honoured to help you in investigating your concerns.

Should you wish to know more about how to support your child in the classroom with their ongoing education, please contact Purple Giraffe Psychology via the form or information located on the contact page.

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