Document Type : Original Articles

Authors

• Farnaz Koobasi ¹
• Jandark Eghlidi ²
• Vahid Nejati ³
• Seyyed Mehdi Tabatabaee ⁴

¹ MSc Student, Department of Occupational Therapy, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

² Lecturer, Department of Occupational Therapy, School of Rehabilitation Sciences, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

³ Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, School of Psychology, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran

⁴ Lecturer, Department of Basic Sciences, School of Rehabilitation Sciences, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Introduction: Children with learning disorders (LD) show difficulties in one or more than one basic psychological process involved in both understanding and using spoken and/or written language. This study compared sustained attention to visual and auditory stimuli in children with learning disability and their typical counterparts.Materials and Methods: In this study, 26 primary schoolers with learning disorder of NOS type and 40 healthy school children were examined. Wechsler Intelligence Test for Children and the Test of Auditory and Visual Continuous Performance were used for obtaining the data of interest. Paired t test or Wilcoxon’s test, independent t test or Mann-Whitney U test were conducted for the statistical analysis of the data using SPSS 16.Results: The two groups had meaningful differences in either visual sustained attention or visual emission error (P = 0.003) and also in visual and auditory reaction times (P ≤ 0.0005). Moreover, neither sustained auditory attention nor auditory omission error had meaningful difference when the two groups were compared (P = 0.752). Conclusion: According to the results of the present study, it seems that children with learning disorder have visual attention deficits. Children with LD have deficits in auditory selective attention and in the control of impulsivity against auditory stimulants. Finally, because of superior performance of children with LD in visual and not in auditory modality, the use of visual stimulants in the rehabilitation and training sessions is recommended. Keywords: Learning disorder, Visual sustain attention, Auditory sustain attention, Continuous performance test