MENTAL RETARDATION

Mental Retardation



Mental Retardation

Introduction

Mental retardation is a common disorder occurring in children which is characterized by noteworthy impairments in the cognitive abilities. There are a number of elements which can cause mental retardation in children amongst which problems during pregnancy, genetics and malnutrition are the most significant. Mental retardation is generally identified by the Intelligence Quotient of the child, which falls around 70. It causes a number of disabilities among children, amongst which learning disability, is one. The U.S. government defines learning disability as a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or use of spoken or written language, which may be manifest as an inability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or do mathematic calculations (Aylward, 2002).Miranda Ferrara (2010) defined learning disabilities as disorders that affect people's ability to interpret information that they see or hear or to link information processed in different parts of the brain (Aylward, 2002).

Discussion

Information Processing

Information processing is similar to a normal child in children with learning disabilities. They follow a sequential path to derive meaning from the information or object of focus. This involves decoding of information received from the external environment through visual senses, auditory, tactile, or kinesthetic. Association of preconceived factors to the information results in executive processing of information to derive meaning from the information piece (Strickland, 2001). Action of motor neurons on the information result in verbal or written action to define the reaction to information received. The most important cognitive processes involved in language learning are: perception, memory, attention, reasoning, and motivation among others that they interact with a common goal: to capture, transform and manipulate or represent the information extracted from medium (Silver, 2003) (Aylward, 2002).

Main Challenges to the Information Processing Faced by Children

Main challenges that affect the information processing capacity of learning disability children is how external factor impacts them. This is a dynamic process in which the individual performs a set of mental operations and procedures that allow him to process the information it receives and deriving comparable meaning with the same efficiency. Memory and schemas, characteristic of active sensor and motor neurons, cognitive processing speed highly affect the information processing by learning disability individual (Rourke, 1999).

Aggression, strange behavior, and low performance in schools specify an encrypted structure that affects the processing capacity. It is necessary to reveal to respond. Problems of subjectivity in the psychic structure of an individual led to psychoanalysis. This directly impacts the visual and auditory processing capacity of an individual. Sensory memory elements (short-term & long-term) directly determine the fundamental consciousness factor of an individual to learn, read and write properly (Higgins et al., 2003). These factors create difficulty in understanding and following work instructions, remembering the learned material, difficult in mastering the basic skills of reading, spelling, writing, and arithmetic, difficult to distinguish and identify words, difficulty understanding the concept of time, and tendency to irritation (Ferrara, 2010).

Learning Disability and Social Interaction

Learning disability of student does not directly impact his social ...