Book Review ‐ Learning Disability and Everyday Life

Accessible summary • Learning disability day services have gone through a number of changes since they were set up in the 1960s. • The changes have been guided by certain ‘values’ such as ‘inclusion’, ‘choice’ and ‘control’. • The everyday lives of people using learning disability services have often been changed to help achieve things like ‘inclusion’, ‘choice’ and ‘control’. • But it is also important to remember that what we mean by words like ‘‘inclusion’, ‘choice’ and ‘control’ might also have to change to reflect what people with learning disabilities actually do in their lives, or what they want to do. Summary In the late 20th century, the day services which had been set up for adults defined as having learning disabilities became understood as problematic because of the effects of segregation. The new solution became the adjustment of services to support a governmental form of personhood; a model of personhood defined by independence, the ability to make choices and be in control, to exercise rights and to take a place within the community and within society. This article tracks the technical changes to everyday life that underpinned this shift – specifically changes in tea making in Croydon’s day services since the late 1960s and techniques of person-centred planning via widely used policy and guidance documents. Through deploying the analytical lenses of ‘scope’ and ‘scale’, two questions are pursued: What is understood as legitimising a person with learning disabilities’ choice? On what scale does choice have to take place to be understood as realising ‘choice’ or ‘control’ as they are imagined in policy documents such as Valuing People?

The last forty years of research have demonstrated that working memory (WM) is a key concept for understanding higher-order cognition. To give an example, WM is involved in reading comprehension, problem solving and reasoning, but also in a number of everyday life activities. It has a clear role in the case of atypical development too. For instance, numerous studies have shown an impairment in WM in individuals with learning disabilities (LD) or intellectual disabilities (ID); and several researchers have hypothesized that this can be linked to their difficulties in learning, cognition and everyday life. The latest challenge in the field concerns the trainability of WM. If it is a construct central to our understanding of cognition in typical and atypical development, then specific intervention to sustain WM performance might also promote changes in cognitive processes associated with WM. The idea that WM can be modified is debated, however, partly because of the theoretical implications of this view, and partly due to the generally contradictory results obtained so far. In fact, most studies converge in demonstrating specific effects of WM training, i.e. improvements in the trained tasks, but few transfer effects to allied cognitive processes are generally reported. It is worth noting that any maintenance effects (when investigated) are even more meagre. In addition, a number of methodological concerns have been raised in relation to the use of: 1. single tasks to assess the effects of a training program; 2. WM tasks differing from those used in the training to assess the effects of WM training; and 3. passive control groups. These and other crucial issues have so far prevented any conclusions from being drawn on the efficacy of WM training. Bearing in mind that the opportunity to train WM could have a huge impact in the educational and clinical settings, it seems fundamentally important to shed more light on the limits and potential of this line of research. The aim of the research discussed here is to generate new evidence on the feasibility of training WM in individuals with LD and ID. There are several questions that could be raised in this field. For a start, can WM be trained in this population? Are there some aspects of WM that can be trained more easily than others? Can a WM training reduce the impact of LD and ID on learning outcomes, and on everyday living? What kind of training program is best suited to the promotion of such changes?

Welcome to the first issue of the journal in 2004. This year sees the appearance of yet another new regulatory body in social care, the Commission for Social Care Inspection (CSCI). The new body is, in fact, an amalgamation of several ‘old’ bodies, including the relatively recent National Care Standards Commission (NCSC), as well as the longer established Social Services Inspectorate (SSI) and the SSI/Audit Commission joint review team. To mark the occasion, Andrew Holman has been ‘in conversation’ with Jim Mansell, who is a Commissioner for Social Care Inspection on the new CSCI. Will the new regulatory body make a difference to people's lives? According to Mansell, the CSCI will make a difference through being people-centred and focused on outcomes. Only time will tell how well the aims translate into better services (and outcomes) for people with learning disabilities – and how long the CSCI lasts before it is merged, amalgamated or replaced by another body with another name. Meanwhile, there is clearly an important job to be done, and we wish the new Commission well in its forthcoming work. We are pleased, in this issue, to have the opportunity to consider the situation of people designated as ‘carers’– more often than not the parents of people with learning disabilities. In a succinct but thought-provoking keynote review, Luke Clements reflects on how people who care for a relative are viewed and what, if any, rights they may have. Often seen as people needing services or sympathy, or seen as ‘appendages’, Clements argues that carers have rights too. In particular, they have the right to respect for their caring relationship, and a right to a family life. The right to a family life – but in a very different context – is taken up by Wendy and Tim Booth in their powerful account (A family at risk) of the difficulties faced by parents with learning disabilities who try to exercise this ‘right’. Using a combination of oral and written sources, the authors tell the story of one couple, Liam and Millie, and their struggle to bring up a child of their own. One story this may be but, as the authors point out, it is all too typical of what happens when people with learning disabilities want to be parents. The core of this issue is a set of four papers reporting successful interventions that aimed either to enhance the personal development of people with learning disabilities or to enable people to develop coping strategies in their everyday lives. The first two papers in this central core use literature and music, respectively, as the means to bring about positive change. Thus, Andy Cocking and Jackie Astill (Using literature as a therapeutic tool) report on their Words for Living Group, devised and run for people with learning disabilities currently detained in Rampton Hospital. The authors ran the group not for educational purposes, but more for people's appreciation and enjoyment. The opportunity to listen to and engage with literature gave people words to describe their own feelings and to consider different ways of coping with life. By way of contrast, Janet Graham's paper (Communicating with the uncommunicative) traces her use of music therapy with people who do not use words. She describes how she uses spontaneous musical improvization between herself and individual clients to develop ‘wordless conversations’. An important finding is that in spite of having profound and complex needs, and years of institutional life, people are able to respond to another human voice, and develop communication and social skills. The other two interventions reported in this issue were aimed at enabling people with learning disabilities to develop strategies for coping with aspects of their everyday lives. In their paper, ‘Why are my friends changing?’, Henrik Lynggaard and Natasha Alexander describe the group they ran in a residential home on the theme of dementia. The aim was to enable the four non-sufferers in the home to understand, cope with and be supportive of the two residents who had developed dementia. In ‘Dog Gone Good’, Craig Newman and Katie Adams report on their work with M.V., a 17-year-old young man with a severe dog phobia. They used systematic desensitization, combined with modelling and relaxation, to enable M.V. to cope with his fear of dogs. The final paper in this issue (Angela Hassiotis and Kerim Munir: ‘Developmental psychiatry and intellectual disabilities’) brings us – courtesy of a travel fellowship – the report of a 6-week work placement in the Developmental Medicine centre of Boston's (Massachusetts) Children's Hospital. The authors highlight some of the differences and similarities between the US and UK mental health provisions for people with learning disabilities, and reflect on the value of this sort of fellowship for developing international links between professionals. One final point to make here is that the extra pages introduced to the journal last year have enabled us to clear our backlog and improve the speed of papers through the system. This is therefore a call for papers. Please get in touch if you have a paper that you think will be of interest to other readers. We also need more referees. Again, please contact us if you are interested.

Midwives׳ experiences of caring for women with learning disabilities – A qualitative study

Asking women about disabilities during maternity care (the ABLE study): Exploring how women with a disability are identified, and what percentage of women identify as having a disability

BackgroundYoung people with learning disabilities use many digital technologies to undertake meaningful and social activities in their everyday lives. Understanding these digital activities is essential for supporting their digital participation. Including them in exploring their digital activities can be challenging with conventional qualitative research methods, because digital activities are a complex and abstract topic to discuss, particularly for people with learning disabilities. In this paper, we present the rationale for developing and using visual tangible artefacts (VTAs) to include young people with learning disabilities in exploring their digital activities.MethodsWe devised a suite of VTAs to engage young people (aged 14–27 years) with learning disabilities in exploring their digital activities via interviews, diaries, and workshops. The VTAs comprised Talking Mats (TMs), probing with technology, digital snapshots and inspiration cards.FindingsOur significant methodological findings were that VTAs are useful for exploring digital activities with young people with learning disabilities. TMs and probing with technology can engage participants to map, recall and explain their digital activities. Digital snapshots are valuable for validating findings with participants, and inspiration cards aid perspectives about digital aims. Although communication and abstract representations can be challenging for people with learning disabilities, VTAs that combine familiar, simple, intuitive, individualised, rewarding elements and collaboration with participants proved valuable for exploring their digital activities.ConclusionWe concluded that VTAs are inclusive tools for exploring the digital activities of and with young people with learning disabilities. The VTAs allowed access to conversations, information and insights that are not obtainable otherwise. As such, the VTAs may be regarded as a new model for inclusive research in the field of disability and technology studies.

Sibling relationships are unique, and, when explored through a disability lens, they raise several important discussions that should be had. To unpack learning disability and siblings as a topic of research, it is necessary to ground the discussion both in sibling studies and in disability studies theory. This article starts with the key texts and journals, followed by theoretical discussions of both learning disability and siblinghood. Wider research into disability in families and siblings is then explored to provide further context. Following this, the article addresses learning disability and siblings specifically under the subsections of Childhood, Adulthood, Psychological and Outcome-Based Research, Care and support, and Everyday Life. It is important to acknowledge the overlap between literature on learning disabilities and autism; this reflects the estimated overlap between both labels (see Emerson et al. The Physical Health of British Adults with Intellectual Disability: Cross Sectional Study, 2016). Consequently, this bibliography will cite literature that references both learning disabilities and autism while focusing on the former. Alongside this, it should be acknowledged that this article employs the terminology “people with learning disabilities.” The term “intellectual disability” is often used outside of the United Kingdom; however, because the author is based in the United Kingdom, “learning disabilities” is the preferred terminology for this article.

Research points to the potential benefit of information and communication technologies (ICTs) for people with learning disabilities. However, there has been limited exploration of the interconnected nature of people and social context when considering how people with learning disabilities use ICTs. The result has been an overemphasis on (and assumptions of) the skill limitations and individual capacity of people with learning disabilities and their use of ICTs. Using a transactional perspective based on the work of John Dewey, this study aimed to explore the interrelationship of people with learning disabilities, ICTs, and the social world. Using a post-qualitative and theory-driven approach, we employed a transactional perspective (namely the interrelated concepts of embodiment, habit, and growth) to analyse interview data from 10 adult participants with learning disabilities. Our analysis suggested that when people have access and opportunity to co-mingle with technology, the technology can become embodied (feel like a part of them). ICTs were found to become an extension of participants’ bodies, enhancing their literacy, learning, and connection with others. Introducing the concept of conjoint action, we explored how human and nonhuman bodies are enmeshed in the formation of what we typically think of as human habits. Participants developed more-than-human habits of ICT use that they drew from to coordinate with their everyday life, navigating everyday challenges. Yet, in restrictive social contexts (or those influenced by underlying assumptions of the vulnerability of people with learning disabilities), participants were less likely to embody ICTs in the rhythms of everyday life and experience benefits of ICT use. Our findings shed light on the entangled, transactional relationship of people and the social world, and present occupation as the conjoint action of human and nonhuman bodies.

This study compared students with and without learning disabilities (LD) on their recall of academic information and information encountered in the students' everyday lives. The academic recall measures included a sentence listening span test, a rhyming words working memory test, and a visual matrix working memory task. Students' cued recall of all the tasks was also measured. The everyday working memory tasks included a dance episode event recall test; a library procedure recall test; and recall tests of commonly found objects, such as a coin, a telephone, and a McDonald's sign. Compared to students without LD, students with LD performed poorly on both the academic recall tasks and the everyday recall tasks. These results support the notion that some students with LD may have working memory problems that affect their performance on tasks other than reading. The results of the cued recall showed that the availability of cues significantly decreased the ability group differences on many of the academic and everyday tasks. This result replicates prior research findings that students with LD do not use retrieval strategies effectively and that some students with LD may have a production deficiency that affects their retrieval of previously encoded information.

Accessible summary The governments in the UK want people with learning disabilities to have a voice about what happens in their own life and also in policy. One way of doing this is through research. This paper looks at two inclusive research projects, which were about people using direct payments and personal assistants. The projects both employed people with learning disabilities. Each of these projects made a training pack from the research, so that they would help people with learning disabilities and their supporters. They also had some effects in ways that were not planned, because the government wanted to learn from them about inclusive research. All research seems to have most effect when there are many voices seeking change, including those of policy makers themselves. Inclusive research is a way of achieving ‘choice and control’. But just like with direct payments and personal budgets, the best way in these projects was to have good support from other people who will listen to you, and help you decide things for yourself. SummaryParticipation, voice and control have long been central concerns in the research at Norah Fry. This paper focuses on inclusive research relating to choice and control, as experienced by people with learning disabilities who use personal budgets and direct payments, and aims to question how the process of inclusive research can be linked to wider outcomes. The paper gives a brief overview of two studies carried out by Norah Fry Research Centre, which were in partnership with self‐advocacy groups and employed people with learning disabilities, between 1999 and 2007. Both in research and in everyday life, we question individual notions of ‘choice and control’, showing how relational autonomy was at the heart, both of the process of the inclusive research and also of the outcomes and findings. However, all social research seems to have greatest impact when there is a ‘bandwagon effect’ of policy and practice initiatives. The discussion considers how the impact of inclusive research designs can be at policy, practice and ‘direct’ user level and is often achieved by people with learning disabilities having a voice at the dissemination stage.

Background: Israel is a land of immigration – a multicultural society with a mosaic of different cultures. There are four maim ethnic groups in Israel: "Sabre" (born in Israel), Arabs, Russian, and Ethiopian. The main aim of this article is to present the connection between two main issues: Culture Diversity and the Attitudes of Israeli parents to children with Learning Disability (LD). This article stems from a deep and extensive dissertation research on parents' attitudes toward their child Learning Disability in Israel and it is an outline of the research study. Family: The resilience and strength of the family depend on the social, cultural and personality of the family in general, and parents in particular. The parents play a crucial role in facilitating and maintaining wellness in children with developmental disorders. Learning Disability: Today, in the modern world, in the information era, when processing information skills are necessary in everyday life, Learning Disability turn into a widespread phenomenon. Learning disability is a general term that refers to a heterogeneous group of disorders manifested in the acquisition and operation of attention, speaking, reading, writing, or mathematical abilities. Within the Hebrew students in Israel (years 2013-2014), 10.10% are diagnosed with learning disability. In summary, due to the fact that Israel is an immigration country, it is vital to research the implication of parents' attitudes toward their child Learning Disability for the wellbeing of the family and the society.

EDITORIAL article Front. Psychol., 13 May 2016Sec. Developmental Psychology Volume 7 - 2016 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00725

Learning disability is a life-long condition that can affect academic functioning, everyday life and social life. In multiple areas, academic and other, students with LD often underachieve, and often with pervasive negative consequences. This study compared self-efficacy and hope in 30 elementary school (sixth grade) children with learning disabilities (LD) and 30 their peers without LD. An ex post facto design was used. Statistical population comprised of all students in elementary schools (sixth grade) in, Harsin, Iran, during the 2012-2013 academic year. Students with learning disabilities were randomly selected. The students with LD had been diagnosed by Colorado Learning Difficulties Questionnaire (CLDQ). The students completed the Wechsler Memory Scale, General Self-Efficacy Scale, and Children’s Hope Scale. Data were analyzed using analysis of variance. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS 20) was used for computing descriptive statistics and analysis of variance. Differences were found between the groups on the self-efficacy and hope. The study demon ­ strated the important role of self-efficacy and hope for students with LD.

Although children with learning disabilities are often considered to be a heterogeneous group, they are always situated in specific social surroundings such as schools and families with which they interact dynamically in everyday life. Therefore, peer acceptance and family functioning may be related to the loneliness experienced by children with learning disabilities. This study explores the characteristics of loneliness and peer acceptance among children with learning disabilities and discusses the relationships among loneliness, peer acceptance, and family functioning. The results indicate that children with learning disabilities reported higher degrees of loneliness, but lower levels of peer acceptance; significant correlations existed between peer acceptance and loneliness, and between peer acceptance and family functioning; however, no significant correlations were found between loneliness and family functioning. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Psychol Schs 42: 325–331, 2005.

Chapter 5 - Working Memory and Dynamic Testing in Children with Learning Disabilities