Disabilities: Definitions Flashcards
a sensory disability involving nearly complete/complete vision loss.
Blindness
a sensory disability that impairs a person’s ability to distinguish certain color combinations.
Color Blindness
Permanently reduced vision that cannot be corrected with regular glasses, contact lenses, medicine, or surgery.
Low Vision
Refers to people with hearing loss ranging from mild to severe, who still have some useful hearing, and may communicate through sign language, spoken language, or both understand spoken language in some situations, with or without amplification.
Hard of hearing (HOH)
Central Auditory Porcessing Disorder (CAPD)
Auditory processing disorder (APD)
APD is not the inability to hear. It’s the inability to interpret, organize, or analyze what’s heard. All the parts of the hearing pathway are working well. But parts of the brain are not.
Characteristics: People with Central Auditory Processing Disorder can have difficulty with, among other things, locating the source of a sound, understanding what someone is saying if the environment is loud or there are competing sounds, following spoken directions, learning songs or instruments, paying attention, responding in a timely way, or learning a new language.
Describe:
Deaf-Blindness
Definition: Deaf-Blindness is a sensory disability that includes both deafness and blindness. Most people who are deafblind are not completely deaf nor completely blind, and retain some hearing and sight capability.
Articulation
A speech disorder involving difficulties in producing specific types of sounds. Articulation disorders often involve substitution of one sound for another, slurring of speech, or indistinct speech. There are three categories of articulation disorders:
- A speech sound disorder: When mistakes continue past a certain age.
- A phonological process disorder: When there are patterns of not saying words correctly.
- A motor speech disorder: When a person has trouble moving muscles required to talk.
Define:
Aphasia
Impairment of language,
affecting the production or comprehension of speech and the ability to read or write.
Define:
No Speech / Mutism
Inability to speak
can be caused by damage to the brain and / or speech muscles, by emotional or psychological reasons, or by a combination of causes.
Neurogenic mutism is often a manifestation of extreme forms of other speech disorders, including aphasia, apraxia or dysarthria.
There are three types of psychogenic mutism:
1. selective mutism, in which a person chooses not to speak,
2. elective mutism, in which a person wants to speak but due to anxiety cannot in certain situations, and
3. total mutism, in which a person does not speak under any circumstance.
Describe:
Manual Dexterity / Fine Motor Control
Intricate and detailed movements of the hand and wrist needed to manipulate, control and use objects, produce neat, legible handwriting, and dress independently. Fine motor skills involve the coordinated efforts of the brain and muscles, and are built on the gross motor skills that allow us to make bigger movements. Disability may be temporary, recurring, or permanent.
Characteristics: Some examples include difficulty tying shoelaces, inability to do up buttons or zippers, scribbly drawing, difficulty using a keyboard, poor handwriting, taking a long time to pick up small objects, manipulating objects in hand, or using both hands at the same time.
Define:
Ambulation
The ability to walk from place to place independently with or without an assistive device.
Characteristics: Impairments to a person’s ability to walk may be caused by congenital conditions, disease, or injury, such as cerebral palsy, neuromuscular disorders, amputation, arthritis, and back injuries.
Define:
Muscle Fatigue
An overwhelming sense of tiredness / exhaustion.
Relates to a difficulty in performing voluntary tasks.
Can occur anywhere on the body.
An initial sign of this condition is
• muscle weakness
• soreness
• localized pain
• shortness of breath
• muscle twitching
• trembling
• a weak grip
• muscle cramps
Define:
Body Size and Shape disabilities
Disabilities caused by a variety of disorders that affect a person’s stature, proportions or shape.
Examples include acromegaly, dwarfism, rheumatoid arthritis, and obesity.
Define:
Intellectual Disabilities
• Their IQ is below 70-75.
• There are significant limitations in two or more adaptive areas (skills that are needed to live, work, and play in the community, such as communication or self-care).
• The condition manifests itself before the age of 18.
Define:
Reading and Dyslexia
Dyslexia is a learning disability that impairs a person’s ability to read. These individuals typically read at levels significantly lower than expected despite having normal intelligence.
Describe:
Math and Computation disabilities
Math and computational disabilities impact a person’s ability to learn and communicate math.
Dyscalculia involves an inability to understand arithmetic and how to calculate. This disability can be complicated by dysgraphia, an inability to draw or copy figures and graphs, and by anxiety. Dyscalculia may be congenital or result from an injury, disease, or aging.
Characteristics: According to Understood’s What is Dyscalculia and other sources, common signs of dyscalculia include:
• Trouble grasping the meaning of quantities or concepts like biggest vs smallest
• Understanding that the numeral 5 is the same as the word five, and that these both mean five items.
• Remembering math facts in school, like times tables.
• Counting money or making change.
• Estimating time.
• Judging speed or distance.
• Understanding the logic
Describe:
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
a developmental problem characterized by inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity.
Children with ADHD are easily distracted by sights and sounds in their environment. Symptoms usually appear by age 7. While people do not outgrow this condition, they do learn to adapt.
Characteristics of ADHD are:
- Inattention
- Distractibility
- Impulsivity
- Hyperactivity
Autism Spectrum Disorders
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) refers to a range of conditions characterised by some degree of impaired social behaviour, communication and language, and a narrow range of interests and activities that are both unique to the individual and carried out repetitively.
ASDs begin in childhood and tend to persist into adolescence and adulthood. In most cases the conditions are apparent during the first 5 years of life.
Individuals with ASD often present other co-occurring conditions, including epilepsy, depression, anxiety and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The level of intellectual functioning in individuals with ASDs is extremely variable, extending from profound impairment to superior levels
Characteristics: According to the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention, people with ASD may exhibit some of the following traits:
• Not respond to their name by 12 months of age.
• Not point at objects to show interest by 14 months.
• Not play “pretend” games by 18 months.
• Avoid eye contact and want to be alone.
• Have trouble understanding other people’s feelings or talking about their own feelings.
• Have delayed speech and language skills.
• Repeat words or phrases over and over.
• Give unrelated answers to questions.
• Get upset by minor changes.
• Have obsessive interests.
• Flap their hands, rock their body, or spin in circles.
• Have unusual reactions to the way things sound, smell, taste, look, or feel.
Describe:
Non-verbal Learning Disabilities
Nonverbal Learning Disability is very much like Asperger Syndrome, in which people with the syndrome have normal intelligence and language development, but have trouble with social skills, sensory input, and making transitions.
AS and NLD are generally thought to describe the same kind of disorder but to differ in severity, with AS describing more severe symptoms.
Define:
General Seizure Disorders
A seizure is a sudden, uncontrolled electrical disturbance in the brain. It can cause changes in behavior, movements or feelings, and in levels of consciousness. If a person has two or more seizures or a tendency to have recurrent seizures, they have epilepsy.
Characteristics: According to the Merck Manual, depending on the type of seizure, symptoms during a seizure can include:
• Visual hallucinations
• An inability to speak
• Convulsions
• Loss of muscle tone
• Staring
• Falling down
• Biting the tongue
• Loss of control of the bladder or bowels
Describe:
Photosensitive Epilepsy
a condition in which people affected have seizures triggered by flashing or flickering lights, or patterns.
Define:
Social Anxiety Disorder
a disorder in which a person feels anxiety or fear in certain or all social situations, such as meeting new people, dating, being on a job interview, answering a question in class, or having to talk to a cashier in a store.
