Exceptional & Gifted Children

Exceptional & Gifted Children Unit 4

Gifted Children: Their minds are often ahead of their physical growth, and specific cognitive and emotional functions are often developed differently (or to differing extents) at different stages of development

Social/Emotional Issues OF GIFTED CHILDREN • 1- Isolation- • Isolation is one of the main challenges faced by gifted individuals, especially those with no social network of gifted peers. In order to gain popularity, gifted children will often try to hide their abilities to win social approval. • 2-Perfectionism- • When perfectionism refers to having high standards, a desire to achieve, conscientiousness, or high levels of responsibility, it is likely to be a virtue rather than a problem. Perfectionism becomes desirable when it stimulates the healthy pursuit of excellence. Perfectionism is encouraged by the fact that gifted individuals tend to be successful in much or all of what they do. • 3-Underachievement- • There is often a stark gap between the abilities of the gifted individual and his or her actual accomplishments. Many gifted students will perform extremely well on standardized or reasoning tests, only to fail a class exam. This disparity can result from various factors, such as loss of interest in too-easy classes or negative social consequences of being perceived as smart. Underachievement can also result from emotional or psychological factors, including depression, anxiety, perfectionism, or self-sabotage. • 4- Depression- • Gifted children's advanced cognitive abilities, social isolation, sensitivity, and uneven development may cause them to face some challenging social and emotional issues, but their problem-solving abilities, advanced social skills, moral reasoning, out-of-school interests, and satisfaction in achievement may help them to be more resilient. It has been thought in the past that there is a correlation between giftedness and depression or suicide. This has generally not been proven.

Developmental Disability: A term used to describe life-long disabilities attributable to mental and/or physical or combination of mental and physical impairments, manifested prior to age twenty-two. • The term is referred to as affecting daily functioning in 3 or more of the following areas. • 1.capacity for independent living • 2.economic self-sufficiency • 3.learning • 4.mobility • 5.receptive and expressive language • 6.self-care • 7.self-direction

Developmental Disability • Mental Retardation: Characterized by sub average cognitive functioning and deficits in two or more adaptive behaviors with onset before the age of 18. Once focused almost entirely on cognition, the definition now includes both a component relating to mental functioning and one relating to the individual's functional skills in their environment.

Developmental Disability • Cerebral Palsy: An umbrella term encompassing a group of non-progressive, non-contagious conditions that cause physical disability in human development. • Autism: A spectrum of psychological conditions characterized by widespread abnormalities of social interactions and communication, as well as severely restricted interests and highly repetitive behavior.

Genetic/Chromosomal Disorder: • An illness caused by abnormalities in genes or chromosomes. While some diseases, such as cancer, are due in part to a genetic disorders, they can also be caused by environmental factors. Currently about 4,000 genetic disorders are known, with more being discovered. Most disorders are quite rare and affect one person in every several thousands or millions. Cystic fibrosis is one of the most common genetic disorders; around 5% of the population of the United States carry at least one copy of the defective gene. Some types of recessive gene disorder confer an advantage in the heterozygous state in certain environments.

Genetic/Chromosomal Disorder: • Down’s Syndrome: A chromosomal disorder caused by the presence of all or part of an extra 21st chromosome. Often Down syndrome is associated with some impairment of cognitive ability and physical growth as well as facial appearance. Down syndrome in a baby can be identified with amniocentesis during pregnancy or at birth. • Fragile X Syndrome: A genetic syndrome which results in a spectrum of characteristic physical, intellectual, emotional and behavioral features which range from severe to mild in manifestation. • Fetal Alcohol Syndrome: Describes a continuum of permanent birth defects caused by maternal consumption of alcohol during pregnancy.

Learning Disability: • refers to a group of disorders that affect a broad range of academic and functional skills including the ability to speak, listen, read, write, spell, reason and organize information. • A learning disability is not indicative of low intelligence. Indeed, research indicates that some people with learning disabilities may have average or above-average intelligence. Causes of learning disabilities include a deficit in the brain that affects the processing of information.

Information Processing Deficits: Learning disabilities fall into broad categories based on the four stages of information processing used in learning: input, integration, storage, and output. • Input: This is the information perceived through the senses, such as visual and auditory perception. Difficulties with visual perception can cause problems with recognizing the shape, position and size of items seen. There can be problems with sequencing, which can relate to deficits with processing time intervals or temporal perception. Difficulties with auditory perception can make it difficult to screen out competing sounds in order to focus on one of them, such as the sound of the teacher's voice. Some children appear to be unable to process tactile input. For example, they may seem insensitive to pain or dislike being touched • Integration: This is the stage during which perceived input is interpreted, categorized, placed in a sequence, or related to previous learning. Students with problems in these areas may be unable to tell a story in the correct sequence, unable to memorize sequences of information such as the days of the week, able to understand a new concept but be unable to generalize it to other areas of learning, or able to learn facts but be unable to put the facts together to see the "big picture." A poor vocabulary may contribute to problems with comprehension. • Storage: Problems with memory can occur with short-term or working memory, or with long-term memory. Most memory difficulties occur in the area of short-term memory, which can make it difficult to learn new material without many more repetitions than is usual. Difficulties with visual memory can impede learning to spell. • Output: Information comes out of the brain either through words, that is, language output, or through muscle activity, such as gesturing, writing or drawing. Difficulties with language output can create problems with spoken language, for example, answering a question on demand, in which one must retrieve information from storage, organize our thoughts, and put the thoughts into words before we speak. It can also cause trouble with written language for the same reasons. Difficulties with motor abilities can cause problems with gross and fine motor skills. People with gross motor difficulties may be clumsy, that is, they may be prone to stumbling, falling, or bumping into things. They may also have trouble running, climbing, or learning to ride a bicycle. People with fine motor difficulties may have trouble buttoning shirts, tying shoelaces, or with handwriting

Specific Learning Disabilities: • Dyslexia: A learning disability that manifests primarily as a difficulty with written language, particularly with reading and spelling. It is separate and distinct from reading difficulties resulting from other causes, such as a non-neurological deficiency with vision or hearing, or from poor or inadequate reading instruction. Evidence also suggests that dyslexia results from differences in how the brain processes written and/or spoken language. Although dyslexia is thought to be the result of a neurological difference, it is not an intellectual disability. Dyslexia has been diagnosed in people of all levels of intelligence. • Dysphasia/Aphasia: • Dysphasiais a language disorder in which there is impairment of speech and of comprehension of speech. It is caused by brain damage, usually in the left side of the brain which is responsible for language and communication (but in some people the right side of the brain is responsible for language and communication - around 15% of left-handers use the right hemisphere for this function). • Aphasialiterally means no speech. But the speech impairment in aphasia could range from complete absence of speech to difficulty in naming a few objects. Aphasia is generally tested on the basis of comprehension of speech, fluency of speech, repetition, and naming of objects

Specific Learning Disabilities: • Dyscalculia: A math disability can cause such difficulties as learning math concepts (such as quantity, place value, and time), difficulty memorizing math facts, difficulty organizing numbers, and understanding how problems are organized on the page. • Non-verbal Learning Disability: Nonverbal learning disabilities often manifest in motor clumsiness, poor visual-spatial skills, problematic social relationships, difficulty with math, and poor organizational skills. These individuals often have specific strengths in the verbal domains, including early speech, large vocabulary, early reading and spelling skills, excellent rote-memory and auditory retention, and eloquent self-expression.

Specific Learning Disabilities: • Dyspraxia: Sometimes called motor planning, dyspraxia refers to a variety of difficulties with motor skills. Dyspraxia can cause difficulty with single step tasks such as combing hair or waving goodbye, multi-step tasks like brushing teeth or getting dressed, or with establishing spatial relationships such as being able to accurately position one object in relation to another. • Disorders of Speaking/Listening: Difficulties that often co-occur with learning disabilities include difficulty with memory, social skills and executive functions (such as organizational skills and time management). • Auditory Processing Disorder: Difficulties processing auditory information include difficulty comprehending more than one task at a time and a relatively stronger ability to learn visually.

Exceptional & Gifted Children