The Extent to Which Developmental Psychology Has Been Able to Contribute to Improving Children’s Lives Essay Example for Free

The Extent to Which Developmental Psychology Has Been Able to Contribute to Improving Children’s Lives Essay This essay will explore how developmental psychology has improved the lives of children diagnosed with specific learning difficulties (SpLD). It will explore how these improvements have been made from diagnosis to assessments, consequences to intervention. Dyslexia refers to a specific difficulty in learning to read and write. However this is not the only difficulty that children with dyslexia experience and there are variations of their symptoms. These problems appear to stem from fundamental difficulties in the rapid processing and sequencing of phonological information in short term memory. These children also have difficulties with associations with letters and their sounds. Learning their left from right also is difficult. In the 1970s-80s it was thought Dyslexia was a label given to rich parents underachieving children as an excuse for their poor performance. Contempory definitions of dyslexia combine a discrepancy approach with definition indicators. The discrepancy approach is key in how educational psychologists identify dyslexia. Dyspraxia is used to describe the symptoms of people who experience problems in oorganising their movements and may have problems with thought, perception and language. Dyspraxia is also known as developmental co-ordination disorder (DCD). Dyspraxia can make written work for children in school very difficult as it has a huge impact on the visual field with writing. Alongside this the mental affects a child may experience in school from being bullied for their condition may then effect their performance in the classroom. Due to late start in researching of DCD, intervention is not often attempted until a child reaches school age. Cormorbidity, where two disorders or illnesses occur in the same peron simultaneously or sequentially, often happens with dyslexia or dyspraxia. Kaplan (2001) found that children with reading difficulties were 51. 6% more likely to have another developmental difficulty. If all these conditions have a common cause then cormorbidity would not be present. Kaplin (2001) states that a combintation of learning difficulties may be a result of atypical brain development (ABD). It is possible that two people with the same atypical brain development may present with differing symptoms as a result of the influence of environmental factors. As a result it is difficult to identify a single biological cause for SpLD. Developmental psychologists have been able to identify a range of factors that appear to contribute to the causes of SpLDs. Heritability may be another factor which influences the presentation of SpLDs. Dyslexia and dyspraxia both appear to have a familial form where parents and siblings also present with these conditions. The extent of heritability has been highlighted through the use of twin studies; both monozygotic and dizygotic. Stevenson (1999) found that heritability was between 46 and 74 per cent chance, which highlights there is some influence from environment as well as genetic factors. Further research has highlighted how some genes on the chromosome are associated with phonological processing and other genes on other chromosomes are associated with reading. Assessments are a key way developmental psychologists are able to further understand children with SpLD, and can then identify and conclude the severity of the SpLD. It is through assessment that developmental psychologists can start to do the most help with improving childrens lives. By assessing them for their SpLD the psychologist can start to make way for the child to gain extra support in school and at home. Assessments for dyslexia such as those which use the discrepancy model assume that it is valid, which is not necessarily the case as there is evidence that children with very different IQ scores can achieve similar reading scores. The assessment is only a snap shot of how the child performed at that time on that particular day. Developmental psychologists have put forward a new method of assessment which would highlight the childs severe and persistent problems when learning to read and write. Such an assessment would assist the child in finding coping stratergies and different ways of learning in order for them to excel as well as a child without such a form of SpLD, it can also speed up intervention, which could allow the child to be assisted earlier on in their school career. When assessing dyspraxia psychologists it can be difficult to identify as the signs of dyspraxia overlap with other SpLD’s. Dyspraxia is often assessed and treated by medical personnel rather than psychologists as with dyslexia, despite signs and causes impacting similarly on the child education and learning abilities. It is usually due to the social impact which dyspraxia has on the child which dyslexia does not which requires medical attention. A large number of professionals are involved in aiding children with dyspraxia including educational psychologists who assess the motor and perceptual development skills such as sequencing and organisation. A DVMI or movement ABC test will be used in order to identify pecific motor skills. The consequences of living with a SpLD for a child can range from social exclusion to self esteem issues. Riddick (1996) found that children with SpLDs often experienced social exclusion; they felt excluded from activities because of their difficulties with reading and writing. Riddick also found that children who were had dyslexia were more likely to befriend other dyslexics which can aid social inclusion. Qualitative and quantitative studies have suggested that people with SpLDs experience emotional and educational consequences. Many children with a SpLD experience soxial exclusion, the self exteem of children with SpLDs is low especially with respect to academic self concept. Children with SpLDs are over represented in statistics on children with depression although the degree of prevelance is not clear. Many children with SpLDs experience reduced academic motivation. Developmental psychologists design and evaluate interventions which can aim to improve the behavioural symptoms of SpLDs. Although intervention often occurs after identification, early intervention in the case of children ‘at risk’ of SpLD is the best approach. School based interventions that aim to improve literacy attainment suggests that intervention needs to be highly personalised and structured if it is to be affective. In order to maximise the long term impact of intervention it is suggested that programmes also need to be intensive and preventative. Given the cost of implications of personalised tuition in the classroom psychologists are evaluating the potential of computers to act as teaching assistants to support children with learning difficulties.