Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment (Aug 2018)

Construction of an Arabic computerized battery for cognitive rehabilitation of children with specific learning disabilities

  • Farghaly WMA,
  • Ahmed MA,
  • El-Tallawy HN,
  • Elmestikawy TAH,
  • Badry R,
  • Farghaly MS,
  • Omar MS,
  • Hussein ASR,
  • Salamah M,
  • Mohammed AT

Journal volume & issue
Vol. Volume 14
pp. 2123 – 2131

Abstract

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Wafaa MA Farghaly,1 Mohamed A Ahmed,1 Hamdy N El-Tallawy,1 Taha AH Elmestikawy,2 Reda Badry,1 Mohammed Sh Farghaly,3 Montaser S Omar,3 Amr Sayed Ramadan Hussein,4 Mohammed Salamah,5 Adel T Mohammed1 1Department of Neurology, Faculty of Medicine, Assiut University, Assiut, Egypt; 2Department of Psychology, Faculty of Arts, Assiut University, Assiut, Egypt; 3Department of Educational Psychology, Faculty of Education, Assiut University, Assiut, Egypt; 4Department of Hearing Disability, Faculty of Sciences of Special Needs, Beni-Suef University, Beni-Suef, Egypt; 5Department of Phoniatrics, Faculty of Medicine, Assiut University, Assiut, Egypt Purpose: The aim of this study was to design an Arabic computerized battery of cognitive skills for training children with specific learning disabilities (SLD).Subjects and methods: Nineteen students from fourth grade primary schools in Assiut, Egypt, who were previously diagnosed with SLD, agreed to participate in the rehabilitation program. The study passed through four stages: first stage, detailed analysis of the cognitive profile of students with SLD (n=19), using a previously constructed diagnostic cognitive skill battery, to identify deficits in their cognitive skills; second stage, construction of an Arabic computerized battery for cognitive training of students with SLD; third stage, implementation of the constructed training program for the students, each tailored according to his/her previously diagnosed cognitive skill deficit/deficits; and fourth stage, post-training re-evaluation of academic achievement and cognitive skills’ performance.Results: Students with SLD have a wide range of cognitive skill deficits, which are more frequent in auditory cognitive skills (68.4%) than in visual cognitive skills (64.1%), particularly in phonological awareness and auditory sequential memory (78.9%). Following implementation of the training program, there was a statistically significant increase (P<0.001) in the mean scores of total auditory and visual cognitive skills, as well as in academic achievement (P<0.001) of the study group.Conclusion: Remediation-oriented diagnosis of cognitive skills, when tailored according to previously diagnosed cognitive deficits, leads to the improvement in learning abilities and academic achievement of students with SLD. Keywords: cognitive skills, learning disabilities, cognitive rehabilitation, computerized training, dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia

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