The Psychology of Exceptional Learning - Term Paper Example

Major Concept in the Psychology of Exceptional Learning Name Professor Course Date Major Concept in the Psychology of Exceptional Learning Reading disorders are some of the very common psychiatric conditions that many children experience during a go part of their childhood. They can often co-occur even in cases where other diagnoses are used. Reading is one of the major complex mental activities that many children suffer from. It is regarded as the most paramount skill in any elementary school curriculum and also the most troublesome subject that many children encounter in school. Among the children suffering from specific learning disabilities, nearly 70 to 80 percent have reading deficits (Honig, 2010, Pg 5). The law relating to Individuals with disabilities education act formulated in 1997 established that most of these learning disabilities occur either as a basic reading skill (where children have problems with word recognition) or certain word comprehension. Children suffering from this disability need to frequently practice word recognition so as to help them gain fluency. The reading process entails certain steps; first step involves recognizing the word. For a child to effectively recognize a word there has to be a perception and concept formation for these words. Also, when reading comprehension, fluency has been treated as among the necessary factors. In the latest study, the researcher has used the fading strategy in word recognition and the active voice strategy in the part of fluency when teaching children with disabilities (Lucy, 2009). Practicing reading highly improves the fluency of a child. Reading orally helps children read passages systematically under the guidance of their teachers. Early intervention enables children to learn automatically and highly improve their social acceptance through plenty of practice on these tips. This case study was adopted from articles on review of educational research for children suffering from learning disabilities. The tittle of the article used was experimental interventions research on children suffering from learning disabilities. This study on reading disabled children was perfomed in one of the major towns in the US. This included class three children from both the urban and the rural government schools within that region. The researcher chose the lower class because it represents the initial step of a child’s formal education; and at this stage, instructions with strategy can greatly make the study effective. This study strives to identify the reading by the disabled children in class three. The hypotheses for this study were the following; 1. Fading strategy will affect the word recognition capability of a child suffering from reading disability. 2. Applying the active voice strategy will result into effects in the fluency of the disabled child. Methodology: This is an experimental study in which a true experimental design with a purposive sampling technique was applied in data collection. Forty children with reading disability were selected from 4 government schools randomly. The sample was then divided into two groups; one was the main experiment while the other was the control experiment. The school children were selected on basis of individual standardized tools. The tools used here were intelligence test, 1st questionnaire for the reading disabled children and the 2nd questionnaire for the reading disabled children. The questionnaires that were used for post and pretest had similar question list. There was no standardized questionnaire that was used in collecting the data regarding the academic achievements of these children. The records from the schools were the major sources used. This study was done in three phrases; the first phase involved selecting children who had disability basing on the achievements merits and the intelligence test. Under this category, only 10 children were selected. After this, the first questionnaire that was a pretest for these reading disabled children was used in dividing them into two groups. Five went to experimental while other five were taken to control. The second phase was the practice session phase. Here, the experimental group was given a treatment during zero hour with the control group kept aside. The experimental group undertook their lessons with strategies alongside informal techniques, cube and formal textbook and a blackboard. The third phase involved testing of strategies. Here, both the experimental and the control groups were handled the second questionnaire for the reading disabled children. This was the posttest. The score that each of these children got was noted down by the researcher for the final findings. In conclusion, these findings reveal that both fading and active voice strategies proved effective for the reading disabled children. This includes those that were capable of recognizing words and even remarkably improved in their reading speed. Also, this research proved that the area difference has least effect as long as the strategies are imparted properly. Both parents and teachers can join hands and help these children to develop their skills in reading. Analysis and results The data in this study are the scores obtained from the tests (both the pretest and the posttest). Each was collected from the two groups, the control, and experimental group. The findings for this group revealed that the mean score showed a moderate difference between the rural area children and the urban area children when instructions were imparted trough the fading strategy to the reading disabled children. The means score showed negligible difference between rural and urban children, at the time when instructions were imparted through active voice strategies to the disabled children. The values show that the strategy had positive effect on the children with reading disability. The instructions helped the children improve in word recognition and their fluency level. The exercise had preliminary analyses done to ensure that not all the participants in every intervention condition differed from one another. The differences in gender ratios were not significant thus not affecting the outcome. In order to get the statistical importance of the intervention, the prevention scores of the participants was compared to the post intervention scores on the other dependent models. A significant interaction came out between groups and time. From the report attained, the fading strategy and the active voice strategy interventions had stronger decrease on the self-reported reading disorder scale. The monitoring group had no an effect in time (Scanlon, 2010, pg 158). This study was also meant to asses the efficacy of the experimental analysis which was used in determining the best intervention program that could be used for improving the oral fluency for children having reading disabilities. Generalized outcomes which were observed to be consistent only when the generalization criterion was reinforced, were also used in this concept. Consequently, the best intervention program at least had effects on the number of recalls experienced by the children in the instructional passages. These results point out that experimental analysis are among the most effective procedures for establishing the comparative importance of instructional methods to enhance oral fluency. This may work more effectively in the context of scrupulous educational assessment. Many learners suffering from this disability are not very proficient in reading. An analysis by the office of special educational and rehabilitation service reported that at least 50% or more of children with disabilities had a score of below 20% ( this excluded those with speech and visual impairments) (US department of Education, 2010). Of the children found with reading disability, about 80- 90% are often referred to schools of special education services. Because of these, the use of instructions in helping children with reading disabilities has become a major concern to many research bodies. Learning to read is rather a complex process; it involves quick decoding and comprehending of texts. Reading at a fast speed and with less effort is referred to as fluency, and this fluency level is the threshold for proper comprehension skills. it is therefore viewed as the only way through which learner can move from the stage of world recognition to that of comprehension. Many researchers have worked had towards achieving success in combating the various complexities of reading problems and the assessment methods. For instance, the national reading pane (NRP) selected fluency as the analyses topic under study. This greatly amplified on the importance of the reading process (NRP, 2010). Educators need to lead in developing both fluency and accuracy in these children. a close emphasis in reading during the early stages can help children develop the habitual accuracy skills. This will in turn lead to accurate reading without use of much effort. Strategies to help in increasing oral reading fluency There are many skills that can lead to reading fluency. Such may include word attack and proper knowledge of vocabulary which have over the years been proposed to greatly improve reading fluency. Most of these normally fall into either of two categories; such include instructional planning strategy and academic teaching strategy. The academic teaching strategies have been designed to help determine how fluency in reading is presented and taught. The concept revolves around repeated reading, reading time, guidance and feedback and reinforcements. During repeated reading, learners are normally put to read one passage repeatedly at various instructional levels. Many researches carried out have greatly proved this as effective and of great impact in the life of children suffering from this disability. Another method for improving reading fluency involves focusing on the feedbacks and guidance that students get while reading. In this case, the praise and feedback emanating from the teacher will greatly change the children’s response in reading performance. The programs put in place under this category include assisted reading, guided reading, contingent rewards and error corrections. The research about guidance and feedback has led into mixed results about improving reading fluency. Another method for increasing reading fluency involves increasing the time that students engage in direct reading. This makes practice to be recognized as the best means of developing better readers. Experiments have proved the effectiveness of exposing children to more reading experience as a way of increasing their levels of fluency. The programs implemented in this category involve choral reading, shared reading, modeling and use of passage previews. The second categories of things that influence the children’s reading are use of instructional planning variables. This involves determining what needs to be taught and the manner in which it should be taught. For instance, in matching passage reading difficulty with a child's ability can enhance the fluency of oral reading. Hence, the reading materials play a major role in the development of fluency. Researchers have also discovered that many children read fast and accurate when the stories being read have words that they had previously been trained to read. This works better for them as opposed to reading stories that have unfamiliar words for them. Strategic approaches used in determining academic interventions Due to the many number of interventions that can be used, selecting one that is efficient and effective can help in improving the reading fluency for the children. The applications extending procedures for functional analysis to basic academic skills normally give a link between the academic difficulties experienced by the children and the respective interventions designed to help in finding solutions to them. Experimental analysis of these academic behaviors can provide sufficient information in relation to the different teaching strategies effects. Through these methods, teachers can use direct measures of academic performances through the manipulation treatment applications. Using this, the treatment application, the strategy will produce the greatest level of children performance in reading. Experimental analysis has also been used in emerging basis. It has been applied in identifying interventions for spellings, math, comprehension reading and establishing reading fluency. Most often clinical circumstances often warranted limited time conditions, this is due to little time and resources in the schools for this assessment. Despite the success of the study, there are certain limitations that could have compromised the results herein. First, the relatively minute number of participants alongside the criteria use in selection of the groups limited the generazabilty of the findings. Families also entering this did so in an order of expressed interests. There are possibilities of great differences between the families that went first and those that went last. Also, because there were little changes towards the end, the number of shifts between healthy and the not ‘healthy group’ According to Allan Hudson theory, there are certain factors that greatly determine a person’s behavior in any environment. These include constitutional factors, their past learning history, their current psychological status, and the existing environmental factors. He adds that these factors, some of them cannot be manipulated, such include the first three. Behavior is mostly viewed in the perspective of occurrences between two events. The consequence ensures that the behavior does not occur again. In the case of this project, the environment in which they were put could greatly influence the children behavior. The conditions that they were subjected to during their learning led to the development of reading disorder (Judith, 2009, p.25). The phonological deficit theory The phonological deficit theory is a cognitive explanation on the causes of reading difficulties as well as dyslexia. Research has shown that most individuals suffering from dyslexia perform very poorly in exams, which evaluate their ability to decode meaningless words through conventional phonetic rules. The theory states that there is often difficulty in reading delays or in connecting sounds of letters. According to John & Marc (2008, p.39), the basis for these hypotheses lies in the fact that dyslexia springs forth from structural deficit that is on the left hemisphere. This brain area processes the sound of languages. Researchers have gone as far as studying the neural path function on the language parts of the brain. Other researchers have also placed their focus on perception that there are short varying sound languages. Such state that the main deficit lies where there is a single timing rather than in the overall function. For decades, phonological deficit has always been the major explanation for the cause of dyslexia by many researchers. However, this is just one of the various theories that have been put in place. Critics of this theory however argue that it is not accurate as it fails to explain the symptoms of dyslexia that are unrelated to the phonetic decoding difficulties. Such problems include those that come with short-term memories, balance difficulties, issues with visual processing, and the various motor co-ordinations that are frequently observed in young children. Currently, many children are really suffering and not getting their desired treatments. A recent government report estimated that about 70% of 9million children do not get sufficient treatment services. This has led to health education in various schools. School has been considered one of the best places to identify and treat children suffering from various academic and other adjustment difficulties. In addition, most of these school children are age mates and therefore there is a provision of a good range in terms of age. In the project, the children were grouped according to an age group of between 10 to 12 years. This was easily achieved in school since most of the children in classes are age mates. Thirdly, the school environment makes children engage in a wide variety of tasks that greatly require physical, emotional, cognitive, and social competencies. These benefits cannot be easily seen because many teachers strive to meet the needs of students that are academics and forgetting about the psychological aspect of it. The diverse educational and psychological needs of these children have greatly created the need for proper educational systems (Sherry et al, 2010, p.85). This sector faces many problems, which are complex in nature, and requires several fiscal constraints. The crisis brought about by this problem is increasingly evident to the expanding population in which children are ravaged with poverty, stress, family discord, and ethnicity. Among this population, children are the most affected thus increasing their vulnerability to these reading disorder symptoms. Use of instructions during teaching can help children a great deal. The role played by tecahesr need to be recognized and the teachers provided with the necessary skills to offer sufficient training to the students.theer are many ways that can be applied by the teachesr to ensure the best results are achieved. Normally putting these children in small groups and giving them instructions regarding the work to be done can show them that words comprise of tiny sound fragments. One of the methods to impart this knowledge is to have these children clap their hands and the words slowly pronounced. This may help them visualize the idea of what they are being taught. More methods involve making these children move other markers or indicators as each sound is made. Upon mastery of these steps, the use of instructions can be applied in teaching the meaning of the words in any speech. This type of teaching is referred to as phonics and, the learners are normally introduced into the concepts slowly at the initial stages. In most cases, many teachers prefer putting plastic markers under the letters in an order as the children are made to sound them out.Upon completion of this instruction phase and the children show signs of reading accuracy and rapidly, they qualify to be exposed to other teaching methods that targets taking them deeply into more literature. Over the past years, controversies have risen over the teaching methods used in training these children. They are often referred to as ‘whole language’ and believed to be more suitable to instructional reading rather than phonics training. The critics say that the whole language concept omits fundamental issues like sound of words. On the other hand phonics critics also give their opinion and state that the methods used are boring. This is because it stresses on memorization rather than exposure and meaning of the literature. Previous researches indicate that the children who are exposed to both methods of teaching normally come out very successfully and gain the greatest in these lessons. The children taught using only one method normally experience some deficiencies. Therefore, for greater effectiveness and impacts in the lives of these young children with reading disability, the above methods need to be integrated to all of them equally. The many previous researches that have been performed reveal that the children reading disorder level increases with the high functioning of the ASD. Treatment of these young kids with reading disorder and autism normally, much focus is placed on autism ad other reading disorder related illnesses (Mary wt all, 2009, p.50). The data got from the experiment needs to be handled with so much care; this means that despite the fact that the preliminary data is very promising, the interpretation should be done with lots of diligence. The sample size used being small may not represent clearly the entire children population. The selection that was used in this study to select the participant represented an important advance and the necessary for psychological interventions. Many children are often affected by performance reading disorder. It is believed that performance reading disorder comprises three basic aspects these include physiological arousal; such include breathing rate, perspiration among others. Negative cognitions are believed to cause a lot of panic and reading disorder more than any other behavioral and psychological component. MPA in many cases is normally related to increase in heartbeat and other cognitive appraisals. Since reading is a psychological and cognitive activity, it normally requires the application of form to make reading effective for the children.The process of reading development in children occurs in stages, and every stage can be closely monitored. A good reader illustrates fluency in his/her ability to read and understand (Margaret & Dianna, 2008, p.447). The diagnosis for this is often known to take many factors into consideration, the American speech language and hearing association has mentioned the following as the central auditory process; auditory pattern recognition, temporal aspect of auditory processing and auditory discrimination. In many cases, there are certain behavioral manifestations that are witnessed in such cases. These include hearing in places with noise, cases of having long conversations, when learning foreign languages and when speaking complex vocabularies. Such can lead into reading disorder and greatly affect the performance of children in school. Some children also may not have the capability of filtering out the unwanted and irrelevant materials. According to Kate et al (2010, p.1155), the path towards successful reading comes in after a child has fully mastered the concept of writing. Teachers need to expose children to an environment where they can access writing materials. This will make the children familiarize with the major concepts in reading. Certain competing sounds are also known to have severe effects on the children suffering from reading disorders. Teachers therefore hold a great responsibility of ensuring that the children are taught according to the many principles of learning. It is also important that these children develop their literary and language skills before attempting to start reading. This is the sole responsibilities of the teachers thus, they need to ensure the students fully have a grasp of these policies. These effects also happen mostly on the children who have been asked to ignore those sounds. It is even worse when they are told that the irrelevant sounds will not be tested. Despite all these instructions given, these persons will find themselves listening to the irrelevant sounds. Such disorders can greatly confuse children and prevent them from concentrating fully in their work. Isla et al (2008, p.355) states that the theories pointing out the consequences of these irrelevant sounds are based on assumption that the sounds are normally processed automatically. For example, a child seated in class and a teacher is in class teaching. At the same time, an airplane passes outside the building making noises. The child will find him/ herself concentrating on the airplane rather than on the teacher in class. Another theory of these unwanted sounds explains that they are processed automatically and pre-attentively. Positive behavior support has been known to be of so much importance. It is where positive behavior interventions are applied to help in achieving the socially desired behavior. This was meant to be an option to students suffering from aversive intervention. From the study, reading disorders are some of the most experienced psychiatric conditions that people suffer during childhood. It is evident that persons suffering from developmental disabilities are often at increased risk of developing these reading disorder disorders as compare to young children who have a history of its typical development. In addition, the children that have high functional autism are even at greater of developing these reading disorder symptoms. Many studies have been carried out to help come out with viable information concerning these psychiatric conditions that are known to occur frequently with autism spectrum. Michael et al (2009, p.448) asserts that reading disorders are also among the highly reported cases. The extent to which the symptoms of reading disorder are unclear requires much empirical studies. The presence of any of the reading disorder symptoms can greatly interfere with the ability of the child to participate actively in school or at home or even in communal activities. In addition, children that have many reading disorder symptoms are often deemed at risk of experiencing serious problems in school, substance abuse, unemployment and the other psychiatric problems caused by reading disorder. The effective means of reducing reading disorder in children is by cognitive behavior treatment. In addition, there are medications like the anxiolytics that can also be used in controlling these illnesses. Not much has been done in relation to the psychosocial interventions as a means of treating reading disorder disorders. Despite the fact that these studies did not state their reasons for excluding children with ASD, many however believed that the children with ASD could not benefit from the cognitive behavioral strategies that are often used. References Anne, M. C, & Ron, R 2007, Treating Reading disorder Disorders in Children with High Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Controlled Trial, Journal of Autism Dev Discord, 1 (1), 1842–1857. Baddeley, A & Jarrold, C 2007, Working memory, and Down syndrome. Journal of Intellectual Disability Research. 51 (12), pp 925–931. Boyle, J. R., & Scanlon, D. (2010). Methods and strategies for teaching students with mild disabilities: a case-based approach. Belmont, Calif, Wadsworth Dennis, M, & Susan, M 2009, Internet Use, Identity Development and Social Reading disorder Among Young Adults. 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