NEUROCOGNITIVE ASSESSMENT OF PUPILS WITH SPECIFIC LEARNING DISABILITIES

Abstract

Reading disability is unexpected difficulty in learning to read despite normal intelligence and the opportunity to learn with competent instruction.

It cannot be attributed to general health problems, emotional disturbances, or sensory deficits. Generally accepted estimates of the prevalence of reading disability in school-age children range from 3 to 9 percent, but some estimates run as high as 20 to 25 percent. In Egypt, its prevalence is about 2 percent.

To obtain the target pupils of this study, we chose 5 big elementary state schools in Assiut city, we chose the pupils who had 50- 80 % in the record of the last year and they were subjected to WRAT and we took pupils who had scores 1.5 years below the expected level and were subjected to WISC and we exclude pupils having less than 90 and the remains of these pupils are subjected to test to exclude pupils having ADIID. The target pupils were 52 in number. A control group (41) pupils were chosen randomly from the same group who had average scores of WRAT.

The aim of this study IS to identify the differences in the neurophysiolagical measures of neurocognitive functions and neurocognitive performance between the learning disabled and normal reader children.

The learning disabled pupils and a control group of normal readers were subjected to a battery of tests to assess the following neurocognitive functions: 1- Gross motor functions.