Basis of learning disorders: Management implications.

Abstract

There are many potential causes for a child's inability to learn in the school environment. If one moves away from learning disorders as being specifically problems of perception and sensory processing and toward the concept that a child may not be learning for more general reasons, then the physician must consider a number of possibilities for impairments in learning. These potential causes may be viewed from an organic and a functional perspective. The specific child in question may have more than one definable reason for his inability to learn and may represent a combination of etiologic factors of both the organic and the functional variety. Thus, the physician is cautioned about "labeling" a child with specific entities thus excluding the possibility of secondary and tertiary causes as well as ignoring the dynamic nature of change in the developing child. The categories to be mentioned are to be used~as guidelines onlyto provide a foundation for thought from which to further elucidate the specific problems of the individual child.