Childhood: Reading, Math, and Language disorders, Intellectual disabilities, Giftedness, ADHD Flashcards
How might negative environmental influences affect a child’s brain development?
There are certain periods during a childs development timeline where they’re especially sensitive to external influences, called critical periods. In early childhood, in the first few years of a child’s life, the critical periods pose a risk for vulnerability to environmental influences. These influences, including but not limited to, instability, stress, low-income, divorce, traumatic events (either the child witnesses or experiences firsthand), adverse childhood events, exposure to toxins and infections, neglect could affect a child’s brain development. High stress environment will increase the cortisol levels in the child’s brain causing the amygdala to hyperactivate. These high levels at a chronical level can damage essential parts of the brain like prefrontal cortex, hippocampus and amygdala. Also, during these critical periods, the child’s brain is at an optimal level to build neuroconnections. If the child isn’t cared for appropriately to feed this connections with relevant stimuli, this can prevent the child to form crucial neuroconnections, which then can impact their cognitive and social functioning.
True or False? It is possible for Dyslexia, Dyscalculia, and Specific Language Impairment to co-occur in the same individual
True, learning difficulties overlap in brain regions impacted and responsible for certain aspects of learning. Therefore these approximities can result in comorbidities.
Discuss treatment strategies to help deal with Dyslexia, Dyscalculia, and Specific Learning Impairment
There are no psychofarmalogical treatment for these learning impairments. There are some multidisciplinary approaches available: Speech therapists help with comprehension and production of language; Neuropsychologists can help assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the brain’s cognitive domains to help with management of the impairment, as well as, providing psychoeducation to the child’s close circle (family, parents, caregiver or school) , psychiatrists or psychologists can help the child dealing with the anxiety and stress, or low self-esteem they may be experiencing due to these implications and their social consequences.
Discuss the controversy surrounding over-diagnosis of ADHD
- ADHD doesn’t have a biological marker therefore, the diagnosis primarily relies on the parent and teacher observations which are subjective to assess whether a behaviour is normal or has ADHD qualities.
- There could be unrealistic expectations from children to stay still for a few hours, not to be active, and act like an adult. This is paired with the competition created between children in groups (classroom) can create the false impression that one child is hyperactive simply because he or she is more active than others.
- ADHD symptoms could be caused by anxiety or stress, which is highly important to differantiate.
- Over-diagnosis leads to over-medicating children. These medications can affect a child’s development, and create various side effect.
True or false? ADHD presents differently in boys and girls
- Boys show more hyperactivity and impulsivity; girls show more inattention or decreased organization symptoms.
- This could be due to the societal expectations from boys and girls. Boys engage more physical activity so, it’s easier to observe their hyperactivity, and girls are expected to behave, so they get better at masking their symptoms.
- Hormonal differences also affect how ADHD manifests, testosterone is more associated with agression and impulsivity.
True or false? All gifted children exhibit excellence in one specific domain
False. Gifted children can exhibit excellence in one specific domain, but they don’t necessarily have to. A gifted child can outperform his or her peers in developmental stages or in their abilities, but this doesn’t have to be at an exceptional level, they can also be excellent in multiple domains.
It’s possible that they do not show excellence in any domain. This could be due to their cognitive domains maturing faster than their emotional or physical development. They also might have comorbidities with learning disabilities, which can affect their performance. They could be in an environment where they don’t have access to the resources to excel at an area. They could also not have the motivation or the interest to excel at something or traditional academic areas.
True or false? In Tourette’s Syndrome, the occurrence of tics increases after adolescence
- False. Tics appear at around 5 years old age, and increases over time, however in late adolescence or adulthood they start to decrease. This could be due to the changes and maturity of their brain.
- Especially the frontal-striatal-thalamocortical network maturation can cause the decline. The dopamine levels are better regulated in an adult brain, meaning the dopamine receptors are not as hypersensitive, therefore have less motor activity.
- As their prefrontal cortex is more mature with age, they have better impulse control
- Prefrontal Cortex and basal ganglia connection network also matures and results in better self-regulation.
- They also might learn to control them better with time, as they gain experience and develop better strategies.
Describe how the brains of gifted children may be different from the neurotypical children
- Gifted children have enlarged parts in their brain such as prefrontal cortex and hippocampus. These areas are respectively responsible for higher order executive functions, like problem solving and learning, memory abilities.
- They have increased structural connectivity and higher activity in these regions which results in faster processing speed than peers.
- Their prefrontal cortex maturation is slower than peers, resulting in more time to build neuroconnections. These networks get refined by the synaptic pruning that takes place later in life.
Danny (8-year-old boy) comes into your practice with his mother, Jane. She is very worried about Danny’s behavior at school. She tells you Danny cannot concentrate or focus in school. He talks excessively and is occasionally very loud. The teacher complains that Danny does not listen well in class, and that his academic performance is poor. Jane tells you she has different experiences with her son at home. He can read his favorite books for hours and is generally well behaved. She seems very confused and does not know what to do next.
* Explain to Jane why attention is important for healthy development by providing an example of how impairments in attention can negatively affect the development of other skills (3 points)
* What do you think may be going on with Danny and why? (2 points) Does any part of the story not fit with your initial thoughts on Danny’s diagnosis? (2 points) * Consider an alternative diagnosis for Danny and elaborate on why (3 points)
- I would explain to Jane that attention is the foundation for learning skills. As learning requires a functioning ability to encode the received information, retain this information and consolidate it to remember it. Abilities to focus, switch, or sustaining attention highly impact healthy development. For example, sustained attention is especially important for reading skills. If a child is having trouble sustaining attention, they might have a hard time following along in the class, which can result in poor reading comprehension or learning . And, with that, they may fall behind peers, have trouble performing at school. Not being succesfull at school can cause frustration, anxiety, and stress, or impact their self-esteem.
- Based on what’s shared, it sounds like Danny has Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Danny’s inability to focus in school and talking excessively and loudly points to this diagnosis. However, seeing Danny can focus on books that are interesting to him and is not as hyperactive at home isn’t aligned with typical ADHD behaviour.
- We could consider, giftedness as an alternative diagnosis. It sounds like Danny has issues at school because he finds the material at school not challenging or interesting enough. At home, he likes to read books for hour, this also points to giftedness.
What are the learning disorders?
Types: Dyslexia, Dyscalculia, Dysgraphia, nonverbal learning disability, Specific Language Impairments.
Define dyslexia?
The difficulty in reading and related language based processing skills. It’s characterized by deficits in accurate and fluent word recognition. They struggle with word recognition, decoding and spelling. Reading comprehension can be impaired.
Comorbidity: ADHD
What are the brain regions impacted in learning disorders?
Broca’s Area: speech production
Wernicke’s Area: language comprehension
Parieto Temporal Region
Occipito-Temporal Region
Cerebellum (coordination of motor skills- dysgrpahia), language skills
PFC
Cerebellum (coordination of motor skills- dysgraphia), language skills)
Define dyscalculia
Impaired ability to understand numbers and learn math facts. Weaknesses in fundamental number representation and processing, difficulty with quantitative reasoning, nonverbal processes.
Define SLI, DSM-5 and brain regions
Failure to acquire language normally.
Delay in acquisition or use of language due to deifictis in either comprehension or expression
Early in life
Functional impairment in communication, social participation and academic achievement
Otherwise normal development
Broca’s (production) + wernicke’s (comprehension)
What are some treatments for learning disorders?
Speech therapy
NP Testing to assess weakness/strengths
Psychiatrist/psychologist to address social aspects of the issue (interpersonal relationships, lack of self esteem etc)
Adapted learning and test material
Define ADHD and diagnosis
a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by inattention, hyperactivity or impulsivity.
Diagnosis: persistent pattern of inattention- hyperactivity-impulsivity
inconsistent with developmental expectations
before 12 y.o.
occurs across settings
significantly impairs the quality of academic, social or occupational life
