Give them all the help they need.

Give kids with learning disabilities all the help they need

August 4, 2016 Children, Family, Viewpoints

By ANTHONY THANASAYAN

As Malaysians look forward to celebrating 59 years of independence on Aug 31, I wonder how persons with disabilities are faring. I caught up with Puan Sariah Amirin last week, and she was more than happy to share with me her views on the needs of children and young adults with learning disabilities.

Sariah began working with people with disabilities in 1988. She is currently president of the Dyslexia Association of Malaysia. Today the association has 13 centres in Peninsular Malaysia. Plans are under way to open a centre in Kelantan.

Here’s a wish list of what is currently needed by persons with learning disabilities:

A mindset and attitude change from the top: Dyslexia is a common learning difficulty that can cause problems with reading, writing and spelling. Dyslexics are not getting the proper attention they deserve. This is probably because there is a lack of understanding of the learning difficulties they face.

Dyslexics are fully capable of contributing to society. What is needed is proper and expert guidance from educators and an education system that helps them to achieve their full potential.

Captain James Anthony Tan was among the first batch of students from the Dyslexia Association of Malaysia. In 2013, he set a new world record as the youngest pilot to fly solo around the world at the age of 21.

A class in session at the Dyslexia Association of Malaysia. Dyslexia is one of the most common learning disability

A class in session at the Dyslexia Association of Malaysia. Dyslexia is one of the most common learning disabilities.

Early intervention is better than ignoring them: It is critical to reach out to dyslexic kids early, otherwise many may become a problem to society later when they cannot fit into the education system.

Skills and hands-on training is better than emphasis on academic qualifications: Every effort must be made to change training strategy from an academic one to a skills-based model. This is not to say that academic-learning is not important. It certainly is.

But the special curriculum for persons with learning difficulties should also provide non-academic subjects like music, art and creative sport.

Sensitivity to dyslexic students: Teachers should give extra time during exams, say at least half an hour, for dyslexic students. This would greatly help students with learning difficulties to get better grades in exams.

Teachers must also learn how to deal with these students. Telling dyslexic kids that they are lazy or stupid for getting poor marks in their exams is unhelpful for the child and downright cruel. Some students with dyslexia can be very intelligent.

Government funding is vital and should never stop: Government funding greatly helps with the teaching materials that special kids need. The money is a godsend for extracurricular activities like music classes, speech and occupational therapy, and physiotherapy which can help improve their academic performance.

Organising special outings requires money, too. More special needs teachers are needed. Ideally, there should be one teacher for every five children.

    Tags
    anthony thanasayan
    dyslexic
    learning difficulties
    learning disability
    wheel power

Dyslexia Makes It Hard To Make Out Voices

BBC ONLINE: 29 July 2011 Last updated at 16:42 GMT

Dyslexia makes voices hard to discern, study finds

By Jennifer Carpenter Science reporter, BBC News

Human listeners are more accurate at identifying voices when they understand the language

 

People with dyslexia struggle to recognise familiar voices, scientists suggest. The finding is the first tentative evidence that small sounds in the human voice that vary between people are difficult for dyslexics to hear.

Writing in the journal Science, the scientists say that many people could have some degree of "voice blindness".

And by studying it, scientists hope to better understand how the human brain has evolved to recognise speech.

Humans rely on small sounds called phonemes to tell one person from another.

As we first try to form the word dog, for example, phonemes are the "duh"-"og"-"guh" sounds that our parents prompt us to make.

But as we master the ability to read, we become less reliant on recognising these sounds to read, and eventually stop noticing them.

Despite ignoring them, however, phonemes remain important for voice recognition.

The tiny inflections in the way people pronounce phonemes gives a listener cues to tell one voice from another.

Because people who suffer from dyslexia are known to struggle with phonemes when reading, a US-based team of scientists wondered whether they might also struggle hearing them in people's voices.
 

Listen well To investigate, the team grouped 30 people of similar age, education and IQ into two camps: those with and without a history of dyslexia.

The subjects then went through a training period to learn to associate 10 different voices - half speaking English and half speaking Chinese - with 10 computer-generated avatars.

The subjects were then later quizzed on how many of those voices they could match to the avatars.
Non-dyslexics outperformed people with a history of dyslexia by 40% when listening to English.
However, this advantage disappeared when the groups were listening to Chinese.
 

Dorothy Bishop from the University of Oxford thinks that this is because "when [they] are listening to Chinese, it is a level playing field, because no one has learned to hear [Chinese] phonemes".
The researchers think that dyslexics don't have as comprehensive a phoneme sound library in their heads, and so they struggle when they hear phonemes spoken by unfamiliar voices because their "reference copy" isn't as well-defined.

"It is a very interests result... the only thing that I would really like to see to convince me... is if they were to repeat the experiment using Jabberwocky."

Using Jabberwocky, the nonsense poem by Lewis Carroll, would allow the researchers to determine whether the listeners identify who's who from the meaning of what they are saying, or whether listeners are purely relying on the phonemes.

Dr Bishop speculated that non-dyslexics may be worse at extracting the meaning of the words, meaning they under perform in this task.

Understanding the mechanics of voice recognition is important, said the study's lead author Tyler Perrachione from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, US, because it allows a listener to pinpoint a familiar voice above the hubbub of a crowded room.

Mr Perrachione explained that very little is known about voice blindness, which is formally called phonagnosia.

"In reality, phonagnosia is probably much more common," he explained, "but people who don't recognize that voices sound different may not even realize they lack the ability to tell voices apart."

More on This Story

Related Stories

• Male voices 'harder to recognise' 04 MARCH 2010, EDINBURGH AND EAST
• Teacher training to spot dyslexia 22 JUNE 2009, EDUCATION
• Scientists discover dyslexia gene 28 OCTOBER 2005, HEALTH

Related Internet links

• Tyler Perrachione
• Dr Dorothy Bishop

Around the BBC

• BBC - Health- Dyslexia

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external Internet sites

PET+BLOGSPOT is the ONLINE BLOG of the Malaysian Animal-Assisted Therapy for the Disabled and Elderly Association or Petpositive. Our stories are CURRENT, ACCURATE and RELIABLE. We offer both local and foreign news on animals, disability and the elderly. PET+BLOGSPOT was first established in October 2007. Our hits since then are now 150,000 and ever increasing! PET+BLOGSPOT is updated daily. Kindly note that views expressed in PET+BLOGSPOT are not necessarily those of PETPOSITIVE. You may also visit our Webpage by browsing: www.petpositive.com.my You can also find us in Facebook under PETPOSITIVE EMPOWERMENT. Please sign up as a FOLLOWER of this Blog if you haven't done so already in order to show us your kind support for our work. Thank you!

Malaysians With Learning Disabilities Have Found A New Friend

PETPOSITIVE NEWSFLASH!

DATELINE: AMPANG HILIR, KUALA LUMPUR

Sharizat having a friendly chat with kids

MALAYSIANS WITH DYSLEXIA HAVE FOUND A WONDERFUL ALLY - MINISTER FOR WOMEN, FAMILY AND THE COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT MINISTRY, DATO SRI SHAHRIZAT ABDUL JALIL.

AND IF THE MINISTER CAN HAVE IT HER WAY, EVERY SCHOOL THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE COUNTRY WILL HAVE AN EFFECTIVE EARLY INTERVENTION PROGRAMME WITHIN ITS SYSTEM IN THE NEAR FUTURE.

Teachers and friends

THIS IS SO THAT KIDS WITH DYSLEXIA WILL BE PROPERLY ASSESSED FOR ONCE AND BE BETTER ABLE TO EXCEL IN THEIR STUDIES AND LIVES.

This piece of good news was revealed at a special meeting over lunch with committee members of the Dyslexia Association of Malaysia (PDM) here this afternoon in one of their centres in Kuala Lumpur.

Besides its president Puan Sariah Amirin and vice president Dr Aziz Abu Hassan, several top representatives from the welfare department in KL were also present.

Wishing a birthday boy "Happy Birthday!"

Petpositive was also there.

The Minister will start her projects for the learning disabled by making a spot-check to a couple of handicapped homes and centres for the developmentally disabled.

This is expected to start in the beginning of January next month.  

According to a PDM definition, dyslexia is a reading disability in a child or adult who otherwise has good intelligence, strong motivation and adequate schooling.

The association says about 20% of Malaysia's population have dyslexia.

However, very little is actually being done for people who fall in this category.

For more information on dyslexia, please 03-4251 5618.     

PET+BLOGSPOT is the ONLINE BLOG of the Malaysian Animal-Assisted Therapy for the Disabled and Elderly Association or Petpositive. Our stories are CURRENT, ACCURATE and RELIABLE. We offer both local and foreign news on animals, disability and the elderly. PET+BLOGSPOT was first established in October 2007. Our hits since then are now 100,000 and ever increasing! PET+BLOGSPOT is updated daily. Kindly note that views expressed in this PET+BLOGSPOT are not necessarily those of PETPOSITIVE. You may also visit our Webpage by browsing: www.petpositive.com.my You can also find us in Facebook under PETPOSITIVE EMPOWERMENT. Please sign up as a FOLLOWER of this Blog if you haven't done so already in order to show us your kind support for our work. Thank you!