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Overview

Learning disabilities refer to actual neurological impediments to processing sound or visual cues, and other components of processing or synthesizing information. It can be explained as a “short-circuit” in one or several of the components of brain processing: input, memory, integration, and output of information.

Stats

Fifteen percent of the U.S. population has some type of learning disability. 1 Difficulty with basic reading and language skills are the most common learning disabilities. As many as 80% of people with learning disabilities also have trouble reading.

Impact

Speech perception and language processing are the most common kind of difficulties. The next most common group of difficulties has to do with writing. And, while not everyone who has trouble learning has a diagnosable, neurologically-based functional limitations, there are most likely other reasons for the difficulty.

For people with learning disabilities, some functions are more difficult to perform. Those can include:

  • concentrating or focusing on a task, let alone doing more than one task at a time, or following multiple directions
  • listening without easily becoming distracted
  • remembering what is heard, especially directions
  • difficulty re-telling a story in order
  • retaining a list of information
  • remembering numbers, order of numbers
  • copying information
  • concept of left, right
  • discriminating written word (words blur and move around on the page or the person only perceives certain parts of what is seen or easily loses her place)
  • verbal memory and processing large amounts of spoken language
  • understanding non-literal or figurative language like metaphors, idioms, sarcasm
  • understanding abstract reasoning
  • finishing work on time
  • attention to detail
  • learning a foreign language.

1National Institutes of Health.