Overcoming Learning Disabilities
Cambridge University Press
Edition: Reprint, 7/2/2015
EAN 9781107531659, ISBN10: 1107531659
Paperback, 318 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm
Language: English
Based on the ideas of Russian psychologists Lev Vygotsky and Alexander Luria, this book explores methods of preventing or overcoming learning disabilities. Tatiana V. Akhutina and Natalia M. Pylaeva build on Vygotsky and Luria's sociocultural theory and their principle of a systemic structure and dynamic organization of higher mental functions. They focus on the interactive scaffolding of the weak components of the child's functional systems, the transition from joint child-adult co-actions, and the emotional involvement of the child. The authors discuss effective ways to remediate issues with attention, executive functions (working memory and cognitive control) and spatial and visual-verbal functions. Overcoming Learning Disabilities translates complex problems into easily understandable concepts useful to school psychologists, special and general education teachers, and parents of children with learning disabilities.
Part I. General Issues in Development and Remediation of Higher Mental Functions
1. Neuropsychology of individual differences in children as the foundation for the application of neuropsychological methods at school
2. Methodology of neuropsychological intervention in children with uneven development of mental functions
3. What psychologists, teachers, and parents need to know about children with learning disabilities
4. Neuropsychological support of remedial and developing education
5. Neuropsychological approach to development of health preserving educational techniques
Part II. Methods of Development and Remediation of Executive Functions
6. Organization of joint activity
7. The 'School of Attention' method - approbation and pilot study of effectiveness
8. Modified psychological methods to facilitate development of the executive functions
9. Numerical sequences in the remedial work with the 4th-graders
10. The role of the analysis of the zone of proximal development in the course of remediation of executive functions
an example
Part III. Methods of Developing Visual-Verbal Functions
11. Remediation of visual-verbal functions in 5-7 year old children
12. Perceptual modeling in visual-verbal functions development
Part IV. Methods of Developing Visual-Spatial Functions
13. Development of visual-spatial functions
14. 'Construct the figure' methods in assessment and remediation of visual-spatial functions
15. The use of construction methods to develop spatial functions
16. Table and computer games to improve spatial functions in children with cerebral palsy
17. Directions of intervention for developing visual-spatial functions to prepare children for school
18. Neuropsychologist-teacher collaboration in designing a 'numbers' composition' manual
19. On visual spatial dysgraphia
neuropsychological analysis and methods of remediation
Part V. Neuropsychological Interventions in Children with Severe Developmental Delay
20. 'Tracking diagnostics' methods
Case 1. Predominant delay in the development of programming and control functions (unit III)
Case 2. Predominant delay in the development of information processing functions (unit II)
Case 3. Predominant delay in the development of energy support functions (unit I).