Prevalence of Learning Disability in Children with Hearing Impairment in Mumbai, India

Abstract

The study was aimed to estimate the prevalence of learning Disability in primary school students with hearing impairment in Mumbai, India. The study was conducted in two phases. Phase I was conducted to screen the subjects for suspected learning disability using Behavioral checklist for screening the learning disabled. A total sample of 54 primary school students with hearing impairment attending English medium with a mean age of 11 years were screened for learning disability. Out of fifty four, ten were identified to be “At risk” for Learning Disability. In Phase II among the ten “At risk” learning disabled students three were found to have below average intelligence on administration of Colored Progressive Matrices (CPM). Hence, those three were discarded from the study and the rest seven were administered with Grade level assessment device and scale of early communication skills to assess type and nature of learning and academic problems and communication skills. The results of the tests indicated “At risk” Learning disabled students performed poorly both quantitatively and qualitatively on all tasks and their errors could not be solely attributed to their hearing impairment. Therefore in the present study the prevalence of learning disability in children with hearing impairment was found to be 12.9%