Articles from prior issues of The Advocate

July/August, 1999

ORADE Seminar - Childhood Developmental Disabilities
by Ken Forbes, Pacific Regional Director

DR. SILVEY SPOKE TO A Group of 44 people, mostly from the Oregon DDS, about different kinds of learning disabilities, their characteristics and how they are diagnosed. With her background as an educator in various capacities and her present role as the Director of the Childhood Disability Rehabilitation Center (CDRC) at the Oregon Health Sciences University, Dr. Silvey is well qualified to speak on this subject. Her presentation was quite entertaining as well as being exceptionally informative.

When children are brought to the CDRC for assistance, she said the most common question asked by dads was “Will they be able to drive?” or “Can they work?” Moms usually ask “Can they get married and have kids?” or “Will they be able to live on their own?” The common question then becomes “How do I navigate the system?”

She then talked to us about categories of learning including: cognitive (potential), academic (performance), behavioral, emotional, and functional (outcome). For each of these areas, there are tests and each test has some really good aspect and some weakness that Dr. Silvey talked about fairly briefly.

She gave us a few interesting tidbits just to whet our appetites. Such as that IQ tests generally get pretty accurate after about age seven. She also said the Stanford Binet scores are generally higher than on other tests. Did you know that translating tests into other languages can be problematic? She told us that the Detroit test of Learning Aptitude, when translated into Russian, gives away the answers.

At CDRC, they select tests based on the strengths and weaknesses of the tests and on the needs of the child, as well as their assessment of which test will allow them to get the most from the testing. They do not believe in making a diagnosis on the basis of any single test and they also believe it is very important to test for real world function. She defined mental retardation as substantial limitations in present function, the intensity of needed supports, and significantly subaverage intellectual functioning (IQ of 70-75 or below). The limited function was described as being in two or more areas of adaptive function.

She described Developmental Delay as a mental or severe physical impairment which results in substantial functional limitations in three or more major life areas manifested before the age of 22 and often associated with mental retardation. She felt schools are describing as developmental delay conditions which should be classed as mentally retarded or educationally limited. She also said many children that come to the CDRC are misdiagnosed.

We had time to talk about a couple of very interesting conditions, though we all felt that another several hours could have been spent on each. One discussion dealt with Central Auditory Processing problems. She described a child who was only able to process information received through one ear. What came through the other ear was just noise. She said the child described how he would get in trouble because he would stand up and yell at the other kids to shut up while he was trying to listen. In answer to a very astute question from one of our newer Disability Analysts, Dr. Silvey agreed that the relationship between the limbic and auditory systems does mean that children with hearing related disabilities are also more likely to have behavioral problems.

We covered a Non-verbal Learning Disability called Asbergers Syndrome. This involved usually very bright children, often the children of engineers and most often blond and blue eyed. In their very early years, they love trains. They become very attached to Leggos and begin to obsess about dinosaurs, Star Wars, etc. These are children that have trouble picking up nonverbal behaviors. They usually lack peer relationships and they do not spontaneously share enjoyment. Most of the people I talked to later either felt the description applied to them, one of their children or a child they know well.

After the session, Dr. Silvey agreed to consider being one of our speakers at the National conference in 2002.