The Child & Adolescent Learner and Learning Principles

Week 17: Exceptional Development

Exceptional Development: Physical Disabilities, Sensory Impairments, Learning Disabilities,

and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorders
A. Physical Disabilities
The physically handicapped have impairments that are temporary or permanent such as:
paralysis, stiffness or lack of motor coordination of bones, muscles or joints so that they need special
equipment or help in moving about. Crippling disabilities include the following:
a) Impairment of the bone and muscle systems which affect mobility and manual
dexterity difficult and impossible as in the case of amputees.
b) Impairment of the nerve and muscle systems making mobility awkward and
uncoordinated as in cerebral palsy; and
c) Deformities or absence of body organs and systems necessary for mobility like in
the case of the club-foot and paraplegics.
Causes of Handicaps
1. Prenatal Factors
a. Genetic or Chromosomal aberrations. Transfer of defective genes from both parents.
b. Prematurity. Birth earlier than 9 months.
c. Infection. Bacteria or virus in womb of the mother.
d. Malnutrition
e. Irradiation. Exposure to radioactive substance like x-ray.
f. Metabolic disturbances
g. Drug abuse
2. Perinatal Factors
a. Birth injuries
b. Difficult labor. Hard and prolonged labor of the mother.
c. Hemorrhage. Profuse bleeding of the mother.
3. Postnatal Factors
a. Infections.
b. Tumor and absence in the brain. Which destroys brain cells.
c. Fractures and dislocation
d. Tuberculosis of the bones.
e. Cerebrovascular injuries
f. Post-seizure or post-surgical complications
g. Arthritis, rheumatism.
B. Sensory Impairments
There are two classes of visual handicaps:
a) Visual impairment. Visual impairment that calls for specific modification or
adjustments in the students’ educational programs.
b) Blindness is the inability of the person to see anything.
Visually handicapped is a form of visual impairment which even with correction, still cannot achieve a
normal educational performance. The term includes the partially seeing and the blind.
Partially sighted children are those with “low-vison.” These students able to see but the impairment
interfere with studying. Blind students can learn through the use of Braille.
Common Visual Acuity problems that students encounter:
1. Reduced visual acuity - poor sight
2. Amblyopia - lazy eye
3. Hyperopia - farsightedness
4. Myopia - nearsightedness

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5. Astigmatism - imperfect vision

Visual impairment that could also affect students:
1. Albinism. Rapid, involuntary side movement of eyeball.
2. Cataracts. Transparent to a cloudy or opaque one.
3. Macular degeneration. Macula, the central part of the eye is affected. Can see large objects and
colors but not read.
4. Diabetic retinopathy. Hemorrhaging of tiny vessels of the retina.
5. Glaucoma. Increased pressure within the eye, gradual loss of vision.
6. Retinitis Pigmentosa. Loss of night vision and with gradual loss of peripheral vision.
7. Retinopathy of prematurity. Deterioration of the retina among infants.
Auditory handicapped, this will affect the range and volume of sounds that can be received by the
individual. When hearing is impaired, there is limited functioning of the auditory system.
 Hearing impaired which manifests their poor language development.
 Can have speech difficulties.
 He/she with all probability will have reading failure.
Deaf children can either be prelingual or post lingual. Prelingual is deafness present at birth or
occurring before language or speech development. Post lingual deafness occurs after speech or
language development.
Hearing impairment is not only the handicap for not being able to hear. It encompasses emotional
problems, problems in socialization, in learning disabilities, and in general day-to-day experience only
in a hearing impaired can comprehend.
Causes of Deafness
1. Prenatal causes
a) Toxic conditions
b) viral diseases
c) congenital defects
2. Perinatal causes
a. Injury sustained during delivery
b. Anoxia. Lack of oxygen due to prolonged labor
c. Heavy sedation due to overdose of anesthesia
d. Blockage of the infants passage
3. Postnatal causes
a. Diseases
b. Accidents/Trauma falls, head bumps, over exposure to high frequency sound.
4. Other causes
a. Heredity
b. Prematurity
c. Malnutrition
d. Rh factor – blood incompatibility of parents
e. Overdosage of medicine
Classification of hearing Impaired Children
1. According to age to onset of deafness
a. Congenitally deaf
b. Adventitiously deaf – those born normal but because of accident became deaf.
2. According to language development
a. Prelingually deaf
b. Post lingually deaf
3. According to place of impairment
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a. Conductive hearing loss – impaired through the interference in sound transmission to

sense organ
b. Sensory neural hearing loss – impairment due to the abnormal inner ear
c. Mixed hearing loss
4. According to degree of hearing loss
a. Slight
b. Mild
c. Moderate
d. Severe
e. Profound

C. Learning Disabilities
This include problems among children related to disorders in understanding or using spoken
and/or written language. Such disorders manifest in their inability to talk, read, write, spell and even
add numbers.
Sensory integration refers to ability of the individual to process information coming from the
environment and make use of the information in the process. The following provides identification of
students qualified for educational services depending on three conditions:
1. Normal Intelligence. This refers to child’s performance at above normal range using non-
verbal measures which include language concepts.
2. Academic achievement deficit. Condition where child shows academic achievement deficit
in at least one subject, such as oral expression, listening, and etc.
3. Absence of other handicapping conditions.
The different types of learning disabilities are:
1. Dyslexia - reading
2. Dysgraphia - writing
3. Visual agnosia - sight
4. Motor aphasia - speaking
5. Dysarthria - stuttering
6. Auditory agnosia - auditory agnosia
7. Olfactory agnosia - hearing
8. Dyscalculia - arithmetic skill
There are three general causes of learning disability:
1. Problematic pregnancies, occurring before, during, and after delivery causing injury
whether minimal or severe to brain.
2. Biochemical imbalance caused by intake of food with artificial food colorings and
flavorings.
3. Environmental factors caused by emotional disturbance.

D. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

It interferes with an individual’s ability to focus (inattention), regulate activity level (hyperactivity),
and inhibit behavior (impulsivity). Most common with boys than girls, there is no specific test for ADHD
but it can be diagnosed through series of psychological tests, physical examination and observing
child’s behavior in day-to-day setting. Recently, ADHD has been classified into three subtypes:
a. Predominantly inattentive
b. Predominantly hyperactive-impulsive
c. Combined type

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On the other hand, children in the absence of activity, they are likely referred to as having Attention
Deficit Disorder (ADD). ADD and ADHD are different disorders in the presence of symptomatic
differences.
Table 1
Behavioral Differences Between ADHD and ADD
ADHD ADD
Decision-Making Impulsive Sluggish
Modest
Short off, egotistical,
Attention Seeking Shy
Relishes in being the worst.
Often socially withdrawn
Bossy Under-assertive
Assertiveness
Often irritating Overly polite and docile
Intrusive Honors boundaries
Recognizing boundaries
Occasionally rebellious Usually polite and obedient
Attract new friends but has Bonds but does not easily
Popularity
difficulty in bonding. attract friends.
Oppositional defiance
Associated diagnoses Depression
Conduct disorder

What Causes ADHD?

There is no exact causes of having it but according to some research people, it came from the
imbalance in certain of neuro transmitters (most likely dopamine* and serotonin*) – Dopamine “feel-
good hormone” ,Seratonin “feelings of well-being and happiness”.
Is ADHD inherited?
Probably. When the disorder runs in the history of the family is very likely to have genetic
predispositions.
Is it possible to have ADHD-like behavior and not ADHD?
Yes. There are children who manifest the symptoms of the disorder.
Can school manifest without intention ADHD-like behavior?
Yes there are several factors that can inadvertently contribute in developing child’s ADHD-like behavior.
What Educators need to consider?
Educators must identify areas where difficulties occur. Once pinpointed, interventions can be done in
the areas concerned.

Linguistic and Literacy Exceptional Development: Aphasia and Dyslexia

Language disorder refers to any systematic deviation in the way peoples speak, listen, read,
write or sign that interferes with their ability to communicate with their peers. There are many causes,
but a large proportion of cases are traced from brain damage resulting in mental or physical disability.
Language disability covers a wide spectrum of dysfunction as in fluency and articulation disorders. The
disorders themselves vary according to the degree of severity and the level of language they affect.

Aphasia
- Language impairments that caused by specific brain damage.
- It is the loss of ability to use and understand language. (excludes physical conditions such as
deafness)

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Categories of Aphasia:

APHASIA

FLUENT NON-FLUENT
(RECEPTIVE APHASIA) (EXPRESSIVE APHASIA)
- Poor comprehension, words may - Good comprehension, difficulty
lack meaning. finding words.

Receptive Aphasia or Wernicke’s Aphasia

- It is referred to as sensory aphasia. People afflicted with this type of aphasia manifest no difficulty
in articulation or disfluency. Their language is characterized by excessive fluency. The affected
is comprehension resulting in speech marked by repeated patterns of formulaic phases, by
unintelligible sequences of words or odd combinations of words or even phonemes (distinct units
of sound in a specified language).
- It results from the lesion to a region in the upper back part of the temporal lobe of the brain called
Wernicke’s area.
- Sufferers of receptive aphasia experience problems in retrieving words from memory.

Expressive Aphasia or Broca’s Aphasia

- It is referred to as motor aphasia. People afflicted with this type are characterized by severe
impairment in the articulation and speaking ability.
- It is caused by the damage to the lower back part of the frontal lobe resulting in slow and labored
speech, defective individual sounds usually with hesitation in the prosodic features (aspect of
speech) of utterance. However, experience no difficulty wit comprehension.

Global Aphasia
- It is characterized by the combination of symptoms of expressive and receptive aphasia whereas
limited to comprehension and speech is limited.
- Recovery of those afflicted with this disorder is poor, there is very insignificant improvement in
performance. Therefore, this type of aphasia is sometimes referred to as irreversible aphasia
syndrome.

Dyslexia
- Define as defective reading. It represents loss of competency due to brain injury, degeneration,
and developmental failure to keep pace with reading instruction.
- It is often classified as developmental (a general failure in learning) or as specific (in contrast
to general failure in learning). An individual does not have mental defects, but s/he experiences
a severe reading disability.
- Defective reading is oftentimes traced from environmental origin and genetically determined.

Visual-Spatial
- visuo-spatial ability is the capacity to understand, reason and remember the spatial relations
among objects or space.
Visual-spatial Form of Dyslexia
Dyseidetic - refers to a difficulty connecting sounds to symbols.
Agnostic Dyslexia - a condition where patients can read but throw a slow,
letter by letter analysis of word.
Visual-perceptual - refers to a hindered ability to make sense of information taken
in through the eyes.
Visual Dyslexia - refers to reading difficulty resulting from either
optical visual problem (physical causes) or visual processing
disorders (cognitive/neurological causes).
Surface - the condition of hard to remember whole words by sight.

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Conditions of Visual-spatial Dyslexia in Children:

Posterior Alexia
- A person who could write but not read. The person had no problems with spoken language or
written language and could see written material adequately. Due to the suffering from a lesion
(damage area) that involves medial and inferior aspects of the left occipital lobe and the splenium
of the corpus callosum (the part of the mind that allows communication between the two
hemispheres of the brain. It is responsible for transmitting neural messages between both the
right and left hemispheres).

Optic Alexia
- A condition where letters similar in configuration or resemblance are mistaken from another, for
example, m and n or k and x.

Verbal Alexia
- A condition where patients could easily recognize letters but could not grasp whole words or
combination of letters. Words must be put together letter by letter.

Dysgnosia
- It means inefficient recognition. A condition where loss of the ability to recognize objects
occurred.

Agnostic Dyslexia
- A condition where patients can read but throw a slow, letter by letter analysis of word.

Cognitive Exceptional Development: Intellectually Gifted and Intellectual Deficit Children

Intellectually Gifted
- Refers to a child whose intellectual abilities, creativity, and potential for achievement are so
outstanding that the child's needs exceed differentiated general education programming,
adversely affects educational performance, and requires specifically designed instruction or
support services.
- An IQ score above 130 signals intellectual giftedness. Even among the gifted children, there
can be difficulties in learning attributes to language impairments and reading disabilities called
dyslexia.
- According to Terman (1954), bright children are usually far ahead of their age-mites, not just
intellectually, but socially and physically as well.
- However, V. Dark and C. Benbow suggest that the processes that underlie the cognitive
achievements of gifted are not unique – it is simply that the gifted children are able to learn faster
and more efficiently process information at a rapid pace, significantly better and different from
the rest.

Educational Alternatives for Gifted Children

Enrichment Programs
- Special activities designed to make
their educational advancement more
interesting and challenging. Programs
like creative writing, painting, and even
dancing.
Special Classes
- Special activities with area of their
interest. Classes that ascertain the
inclination of the child.

*These programs are designed to harness the special talents of the intellectually gifted.

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Intellectual Deficit Children

Types of Intellectual Deficit Children

Characteristics According to:
Category
Physical Mental Socio-Emotional
Down Syndrome - Almond shaped - Mental - Have troubles
- Characterized eyes retardation can attending to,
by a distinct - Folded eyelids be moderate to discriminating,
physical - Short stature severe. and
appearance, (height) - risk to develop interpreting
and physical Alzheimer’s complex or
and mental disease later in subtle
retardation. It is life. information in
caused by a their
deviation in the environment.
set of
chromosomes
labeled number
21.
- It is chromosome abnormality found in females in which
secondary sex characteristics are developed only with the
Turner Syndrome
administration of female hormones.
- *Any abnormality in the internal reproductive organs cause
permanent sterility.
Klinefelter’s - Breast - Anxiety, hyperactivity, attention deficits
Syndrome development and abnormal communication patterns.
- It is a form of rounded broad - Male may suffer from attention deficits.
chromosomes and hipped figure - Female may suffer from depression.
abnormality among men.
characterized - Cleft palate,
by feminine seizures,
physical abnormal EEGs
characteristics. (electroen-
cephalogram), and
eye disorder.
- It is a collection of disorders characterized by gross deficits in
many areas of cognitive, emotional and social development.
Pervasive - *Disorders are often referred to as psychoses (disturbances in
Developmental which the person’s functioning is so maladaptive that s/he is said
Disorders to be out of touch with reality.
- *Often been confused with schizophrenia.
- * Impairments exist in social interactions, communication and
other range of activities and interest.

Autistic Disorder - Inability of the children to communicate and interact socially.

- A pervasive - These children have specific language deficiencies. The features
development include the following:
disorder known Extreme autistic aloneness
as early Language abnormalities
infantile autism Repetitive behaviors
or childhood - Autism is commonly appearing in boys than girls.
autism. - Seem to live in a different world, unmindful of the immediate
surroundings.
- Master only few tasks in life.
- Prefer inanimate objects to human interactions.
- Avoid looking at others in the eye.

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- They are not aware even aware of themselves.

Asperger’s - Mild form of - Manifest higher - More social
Syndrome autism. mental and willful in
- A syndrome - Distinct form of functioning. their behavior.
with many autism. - Overdeveloped - Progress in
symptoms use of school at rate
similar to that of imagination. farther than
autism. - Fewer those who
language suffer from
deficits. autism.

Exceptional Development: Juvenile Delinquency

As defined by Merriam Dictionary, a conduct by a juvenile (of young people) characterized by
anti-social behavior that is beyond parental control and therefore subject to legal action.
They are classified into two. One is the status offender, he is young who is truant, disregard
house rules, engages in activities not allowed for his age or has likely done something which can be
classified a crime were it not for his being minor.
The second one is the one who has done something that is considered a crime regardless of
who commits. Young persons aged 16 to 18 are treated differently from other criminals.
This corresponds to the Republic Act No. 9344, otherwise known as Juvenile Justice and
Welfare Act of 2006. The RA explains the rights of an alleged child under the Philippine laws and
contexts and how is government functioning on the betterment of a child who is in conflict of the law.
As per Chapter 1; section 4 (Definition of Terms), it is defined that, (e) "Child" refers to a person
under the age of eighteen (18) years. A child who is at risk, is a child who is vulnerable to and at the
risk of committing criminal offenses because of personal, family and social circumstances, such as, but
not limited to, the following:

(1) being abused by any person through sexual, physical, psychological, mental, economic or
any other means and the parents or guardian refuse, are unwilling, or unable to provide
protection for the child;
(2) being exploited including sexually or economically;
(3) being abandoned or neglected, and after diligent search and inquiry, the parent or
guardian cannot be found;
(4) coming from a dysfunctional or broken family or without a parent or guardian;
(5) being out of school;
(6) being a streetchild;
(7) being a member of a gang;
(8) living in a community with a high level of criminality or drug abuse; and
(9) living in situations of armed conflict.

A Child in Conflict with the Law (CCIL) refers to a child who is alleged as, accused of, or
adjudged as, having committed an offense under Philippine laws. These alleged child must under go
Community-based programs that provides interventions intervention and diversion, as well as
rehabilitation of the child in conflict with the law, for reintegration into his/her family and/or community.
As per Chap. 2; Sec. 6 of RA no. 9344, the minimum age set to a child is at (15) years of age
or under at the time of the commission of the offense shall be exempt from criminal liability. However
the child is subjected to program interventions. A child above fifteen (15) years but below eighteen (18)
years of age shall likewise be exempt from criminal liability and be subjected to an intervention program,
unless he/she has acted with discernment, in which case, such child shall be subjected to the
appropriate proceedings in accordance with this Act.

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Exceptional Development: Psychological Disorders that Affect Children

Disorders are classified as conduct disorders and deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

Conduct Disorder
- This manifest in repetitive and persistent pattern of behavior where a young person transgresses
on the basic rights of others or violates societal norms or rules. This is considered a disorder of
under control.
- Socialized Conduct Disorder: it happens when a young person in the company of peers shows
a misconduct behavior.
- Unsocialized Conduct Disorder: it happens when the behavior occurs primarily when the child
is alone.

Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)

- It is a persistent pattern of inattention and hyperactivity or impulsivity that is far excess if such
behaviors observed in children in various stages of development.
- This disorder creates difficulties in relating to people at home, in the classroom and in the peer
group. The overcontrolled disorders have adverse effect on the child himself. The child with this
disorder is characterized as withdrawn, passive, disinterested in things and in people, in general,
not the happy child a parent would want to have.

Phobias
- It is learned through association of the experience of being in a state of fear with a specific
stimulus. These phobias are usually learned and will need therapeutic interventions to unlearn
the association.

Anxiety Disorder
- These are characterized by feeling of apprehension and low self-confidence that may be felt
through the adult years. This disorder associated with moods are the most common type of
mental difficulty.
- Depression, one kind of this disorder which is higher in the early adulthood that in adolescence
or middle age.
- It is important to remember that under-controlling and over-controlling behaviors occur together.
Children with aggressive behavior may also experience depression. Comorbidity is the term
used to describe this co-occurrence of two or more problem behaviors.

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