Monica-Dumitriţa MIRON*1 & Anca DOBREAN 2
1The School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences The University of Edinburgh, Scotland
2Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Abstract
Learning Disorder (LD) and Reading Disorders (RD) are characterized by difficulties in operating with written symbols. The aim of this research was to investigate the role of visual spatial processing and letter recognition in Romanian children with LD and RD and low IQ. The first study, involved 25 children (N=13 test group, and control group, N=12) which took part in a Letter Labyrinth task. Results indicate towards an underlying common cause for confusion between visual stimuli (letters numbers and shapes). In the second study, 21 children completed a recognition task. The findings suggest that difficulties in differentiating between letters and numbers for children with LD and RD persist despite letter acquisition and that these categories are not well structured.
Keywords: Learning Disorders (LD), Reading Disorders (RD), low IQ, visual-spatial processing, Romanian children with special educational needs, letter detection, number detection, shape detection.
