Mohammad Sabir
Masters in audiology and speech therapy, Tawam hospital, Al Ain,UAE.
Title: P300 Variability in Individuals with Learning Disability
Biography:
Masters in audiology and speech therapy,
Tawam hospital,
Al Ain,UAE.
Abstract:
Children with learning disability (LD) represent a unique challenge for audiologists. They have problem in reading, working memory, sensory motor coordination and early sensory processing. Characteristics of children with learning disabilities are many. Soft or mild neurological signs may also be observed in children with learning disabilities. Often poor academic performance in grade school is the first indication of LD (Hall, 1992). P300 is a long latency cortical endogenous potential occurring at about 300 msec (Sutton, Barren, Zubin & John, 1965). P300 can be taken as a measure or index of stimulus processing. It appears to have potential value in the assessment of hearing sensitivity and auditory processing abilities. Another distinct advantage of the P300 response is that it is less dependent on the physical characteristics of stimulus employed than are the exogenous potentials although it does require attention to task relevant stimulus items (Butcher, 1983).Thus main focus on this study is to discuss the use of P300 in the diagnosis of learning disability in which the underlying problem may be connected to cortical or cortical auditory processing. 59 subjects participated in the study out of which 50 ears were selected for the testing. (25 male Participant and 25 Female Participants) based on academic performance with respect to reading, writing and social relationship and speech and language development were included in the study.Age Range: 7 - 20 (Chronological age),Cognitive status (IQ): average IQ Level. It can be concluded that, Individual with Learning disability (LD) be evidence for poor P300 responses, it can result in better estimation of fine and gross frequency discrimination, and fine will be more exaggerated than that of gross discrimination of acoustic signal according to gender and age. As Learning disability individuals show auditory or cortical processing difficulty, and they needed longer inter stimulus intervals to separate two sounds than did normal individuals.
KEYWORDS: Learning disability, P300, odd ball paradigm, Gross and fine stimulus