Class Notes:

• The actual term "learning disabilities" didn’t come into common use until 1964 when Samuel Kirk proposed it. BUT learning disabilities have existed as long as there have been literacy expectations!
• The field somewhat parallels the field of speech and language pathology
• 1850: observed acquired cases or those who lost normal functioning/oral language (different than learning disabilities which is neurodevelopmental. in other words, you’re born with it)
• Mid to late 1800s: awareness that brain caused behavior (150 years ago, this was a breakthrough! Certain regions of the brain was responsible for certain behaviors)
  • Phrenology came into popularity:
    • Different regions of the brain responsible for certain cognitive skills/behaviors;
    • Individual differences between people are due to certain aspects of the brain being more/less developed — where they got it wrong was that they thought they could feel it by feeling the skull
• First individual who coined the term dyslexia: Kussmaul (in Germany, late 1870s). This was a case of an acquired loss of reading in a well educated reader. They had a stroke and lost the ability to read (other functions remained intact but specific loss of reading ability)
  • DIFFERS from developmental dyslexia: present in birth due to cerebral function
  • Called congenital “word blindness” (synonymous to dyslexia): despite completely normal visual function, you wouldn’t be able to identify the word
    • “Congenital” : present from birth
• First well studied case: Physician was Pringle Morgan
  • 14 year old boy who was seemingly very bright (IQ tests didn’t exist; just by interacting); reading at a second grade level; no awareness of remediation (big problems with education system is how to deal with cases like this)
• Early 1900s: US started research
  • Early 1920s: Samuel Orton - administered early versions of Iowa tests to Iowan schoolchildren and identified kids with unusual reading patterns
    • Orton-Strephosymbolia or “twisted symbols” : early on was seen as a visual disorder (kids literally saw words differently)
    • Orton’s student: Anna Gillingham in mid-1930s wrote a monograph in which she laid out an intervention approach that she said would be effective for kids with strephosymbolia (Orton-Gillingham approach: How Do We Read?)
  • 1920s/30s/40s: wasn’t a whole lot going on in the field
  • 1960s: LD field takes off with Samuel Kirk: He identified subtypes of learning disabilities and provided a definition of LD (an actual label people agreed upon; not just conceptual)
    • Prior: “Brain injured child” and “brain injured reader” were common terms, which people to believe that — if the brain is messed up, what can we do about it? There was this belief that the brain wasn’t particularly malleable. There weren’t established techniques to treat LD.
  • Early 1970s: sizable percentages of kids with various neurodevelopmental disorders weren’t receiving support in schools. Public schools were allowed to say that they couldn’t/didn’t have the resources to serve these kids. ⅓ to ½ who should have received services didn’t.
    • Public schools weren’t for all until the early 1970s!!!!
  • 1975: President Ford signed into law “The Education for All Handicapped Children Act (Public Law 94-142)" This is the Bill of Rights for kids with disabilities!
    • There was a need for people in the field (10s of millions of dollars poured into training teachers)
    • From the 70s-90s, the number of kids diagnosed with a disability climbed
    • Changed landscape of public education (everyone was guaranteed public education regardless of level of support)
    • Free appropriate public education (FAPE) is now the mantra
      • At no costs!!! (this is huge!!!)
      • Costs 50% more to educate a disabled child versus a non-disabled child
      • Illinois is highly dependent on property taxes (8,000 in poorer neighborhoods versus 13,000/14,000 in Wilmette)
  • Up until 1980, most people believed that learning disabilities were predominantly due to a visual deficit. People believed that kids were literally seeing words differently from their peers. In reality, only a small set of kids with LD have that as their primary problem.
  • Since the 1800s, there was always this awareness of the relationship between the brain and human behavior but it wasn’t very well understood. The 1980s corresponded to a proliferation of effective ways to measure brain activity through MRI/CAT/PET scans/EEG.
    • Around this time, the Orton Dyslexia Society created a dyslexia brain bank where individuals with well documented cases of dyslexia donated their brains to research. This showed:
      • A lack of neurological connection between certain regions of the brain — particularly the link between the occipital and parietal lobes of the brain (angular gyrus)