13 Apr 2022

119

How Does Cerebral Palsy Affect Learning Ability?

Format: Chicago

Academic level: College

Paper type: Research Paper

Words: 1709

Pages: 6

Downloads: 0

Cerebral Palsy (CP) is the most prevalent motor disability in kids and impacts approximately two or three children in every 1,000 births in the US. Cerebral palsy is a neurological condition that could affect individuals in various ways, leading to different levels and forms of impairments. CP can occur at birth where certain parts of the brain have been damaged due to medical complications. There are various forms of cerebral palsy which range from mild incidences that involve slight mobility problems to more severe cases which involve speech impairments and the usage of a wheelchair. Many teachers feel more ready to include learners with severe cerebral palsy forms in their classrooms since the needs of these students are apparent, while the needs of learners with mild cerebral palsy are frequently not manifest. Overall, cerebral palsy negatively affects the learning ability of children suffering from the condition.

Basic arithmetic skills like number recognition and counting have been found to have considerable impact on later educational success. Besides arithmetic and numbers skills is a core role in day-to-day life. Individuals are faced with numerical data in their everyday undertakings, including getting the right means of transport, making payments for shopping and making dates for meeting friends (Van Rooijen, Verhoeven & Steenbergen, 2011) . Children with CP frequently have issues with arithmetic, although the growth of arithmetical skills in these kids has not been significantly given attention. Thus, this could affect children's ability to learn and understand arithmetic and numerical numbers in the class.

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Fundamentally, cerebral palsy impacts the involvement of the student's school activities. When a student has mobility issues because of physical disability and teachers are not adequately prepared on how to accommodate the student with physical ability, the student could be prevented from opportunities to take part in classroom activities (Tindal, 2017). The inability of children suffering from CP to move around could affect their learning abilities of classroom activities which involve movements.

The ability to understand and perceive what happens in an individual's life informs the goals and decision of a person. If a child with cerebral palsy suffers from cognitive impairment, their intellectual ability usually is impacted by the degree of needed additional supports and interventions. Cognition, which is the capacity to use a person's mental ability for reasoning, accurately perceiving, and learning, informs various elements of people's lives (National Dissemination Center for Children with Disabilities (NICHCY), 2010) . It is the basis of people's ability to utilize what they know to build relationships, communicate with others and achieve goals. 

When a child suffers from CP, it does not mean that they have impaired cognitive functions. At times, a child's CP will only impact their physical functioning. Nonetheless, approximately 30 and 50 percent of kids who have cerebral palsy have a certain cognitive impairment level (Hutzler & Barak, 2017) . Children who have severe cerebral palsy have a higher possibility of possessing cognitive impairments. Primarily, learning disabilities are processing processes based on neurology. These processing issues could interfere with learning basic skills like math, writing and reading. Thus, children with severe CP and cognitive impairments will have problems learning the basic skills. 

Intellectual disability is characterized by below average intellectual functioning. Children with intellectual disability will have limitations in both cognitive functioning – the thinking skills which result in knowledge – and adaptive behavior – the capacity to adapt to the environment and also function in day-to-day life (Bee, Boyd & Johnson, 2015) . So, children with intellectual disability triggered by cerebral palsy will have issues with cognitive functioning and adaptive behavior in their ability to adapt to the classroom context, which could make their learning difficulties. 

Further, children with CP might experience particular learning difficulties. These could consist of a short span of attention, motor planning challenges – sequencing and organization, language difficulties and perceptual difficulties. These could affect numeracy, literacy and other skills (Bee, Boyd & Johnson, 2015).  Also, learning could be impacted by problems in gross motor and fine motor communication and coordination (Graham K. et al., 2013) . Learners which cerebral palsy require to put more effort into focusing on their movements as well as a sequence of activities than others, and so they might tire more easily. 

Children suffering from motor planning difficulties have a difficult time comprehending tasks as well as planning how to do them, making performing the jobs even more difficult. For example, students with motor planning difficulties could experience a hard time understanding math homework and planning how to do it, which could make it for them to do the homework. Motor planning is a skill which enables people to understand and also perform movement steps (Howard et al., 2005) . People use motor planning for every physical activity such as washing hands and brushing teeth. Children who struggle with motor planning could take a long time learning and completing physical activities. Children struggling with motor planning may appear clumsy. They could seem slow to learn basic skills and as well take a long time completing physical tasks, and this could also impact how the children do in school because basic physical tasks could be difficult to them. 

On the other hand, perceptual difficulties including visual and auditory perception could also impact the ability of children with cerebral palsy to learn. Perception is an individual's capacity to take information from the world around them and make sense of it. This could be through hearing, seeing, smelling, touching or tasting, that using all body senses (Howard et al., 2005) . How an individual can perceive or understand what is around them could be impaired by cerebral palsy. These perceptual issues may be taken multiple forms and could be complex to understand and explain. Not all children with cerebral palsy have perceptual difficulty. Specific perceptual issues could appear like a communication problem or a memory loss. However, regardless of the form of perceptual difficulty children could have, children suffering from perceptual difficulties find it difficult to make sense of the information they hear or see, which could affect various fields of learning, particularly learning to read along with working with numbers.

In general, perceptual problems which affect learning in children can either be visual or auditory perceptions. Visual perception is the ability of the brain to make sense of the things they eyes see. Excellent visual perceptual skills are vital for everyday learning skills like writing, reading, completion of puzzles and drawing. Without being able to complete these daily tasks, the self-esteem of a child could suffer, and their play and academic performance would be compromised (Howard et al., 2005) . In essence, if children have visual perception problems, they may have difficulties including the skill and ease with which they could complete their academic tasks and concentration and attention – sustained effort, performing activities without interruptions and the ability to hold that effort long enough to be able to do the job.

Moreover, the children might be unable to have self-regulation, in which they can obtain, keep and change their attention, behavior and activity level necessary for class activities. Visual perception difficulties could also prevent children from participating in activities which need visual perceptual skills (Howard et al., 2005) . Furthermore, these children may be frustrated with precise hand and eye tasks and could prefer getting other children to do classroom tasks for them under their direction, instead of them doing themselves. For example, "mum solve this puzzle for me." 

Similarly, auditory perception problem could adversely affect the learning ability of children with CP. Auditory perception is the capability or receiving and interpreting information which reaches one's ears. Logically, auditory perception is essential in people's daily lives, existing nearly in all tasks people perform. It enables people to interact with their surroundings appropriately, communicate fluently, alert them of any possible threats around them, and make it possible to understand what other people communicate (Howard et al., 2005) . Starting from the time a child's first class begins in kindergarten to the last university class, good auditory perception is a crucial component of academics, since it enables students to follow along and likewise understand what the educators say. Poor auditory perception with no additional help such as visuals could cause understanding issues when leaners attend to a conversation or read, which could result in poor performance in school. So, both visual and auditory perception difficulties which could be triggered by cerebral palsy could adversely influence the academic performance of students. 

Further, gross motor and fine motor communication and coordination play an essential role in the learning activities of students and when an inability to coordinate and communicate gross motor and fine motor hinders the student's academic performance. According to (Howard et al. (2005) , gross motor skills the skills necessary for body movement and they involve core stabilizing body muscles for performing day-to-day functions like sitting upright, running, walking and standing. Also, it comprises eye-hand coordination skills like catching, writing, and catching. Conversely, fine motor skills entail using the smaller muscle of the hands, usually in activities such as using pens and pencils. The efficiency of fine motor skills considerably influences the quality of the task results and speed of performing tasks. Effective fine motor skills need various independent skills for working together for the proper performance of the task. 

Gross motor skills are crucial for enabling children to undertake everyday functions like walking, sitting and running. Therefore, lack gross motor skills will influence the ability of students to maintain an upright sitting, which in turn would affect the strength of the students to take part in fine motor skills such as drawing writing, along with sitting upright to attend to classroom instructions, which then affects their academic learning and performance (Howard et al., 2005) . Gross motor skills jeopardize the student's strength of coping with a full day of school such as moving between classrooms, sitting upright at a desk or carrying heavy school bags. 

In conclusion, cerebral palsy may be a complex condition, which affects people in different ways, subject to the severity and type. It may make individuals have different needs and different functioning levels. The impact of the condition could have implications on for cognitive intelligence, movements, perceptions and other functions like learning and speaking. In particular, cerebral palsy has associative conditions such as intellectual disabilities, learning difficulties, visual and auditory impairments and hearing loss, all which could negatively impact on the student's ability to learn and succeed in academics. This paper has discussed the different ways in which cerebral palsy among students affect their learning abilities. So, it is crucial for both the parents and teachers to equally understand cerebral palsy, how it could affect the child's learning abilities, and how the children can do and not do, to help in creating activities as well as experiences which allow for maximum engagement of schools at school, and consequently, enable the students to learn well at school and enhance their academic performance. The teachers should be able to support and help children with cerebral palsy to ensure that the learning environment is accommodative for them, and they can fully engage and focus on their school work. Together with understanding the cerebral palsy conditions and how it could affect children, it is vital to recognize and see the children with cerebral palsy as people with needs, desires and wants.

References 

Bee, H. L., Boyd, D. R., & Johnson, P. A. (2015).  Lifespan development . Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Graham K. et al. (2013). "(PDF) Cerebral palsy." Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/289601622_Cerebral_palsy.

National Dissemination Center for Children with Disabilities (NICHCY). (2010). "Cerebral Palsy." Retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED572709.pdf.

Howard, J., Soo, B., Graham, H. K., Boyd, R. N., Reid, S., Lanigan, A., ... & Reddihough, D. S. (2005). Cerebral palsy in Victoria: motor types, topography and gross motor function.  Journal of paediatrics and child health 41 (9‐10), 479-483.

Hutzler, Y., & Barak, S. (2017). Self-efficacy of physical education teachers in including students with cerebral palsy in their classes.  Research in developmental disabilities 68 , 52-65.

Tindal, S. R. (2017). Students With Mild Cerebral Palsy in The Classroom: Information and Guidelines for Teachers.  Papers & Publications: Interdisciplinary Journal of Undergraduate Research 6 (1), 14.

Van Rooijen, M., Verhoeven, L., & Steenbergen, B. (2011). Early numeracy in cerebral palsy: review and future research.  Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology 53 (3), 202-209.

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