Is Your Learning Disability Popular?

Like many things in life Learning disabilities are subject to popularity contests. The most prevalent are not necessarily the ones that get the most attention. As it turns out, the amount research and the number of publications written about any given Learning disability is not necessarily relative to the number of people who suffer from it. Dorothy Bishop,a professor in developmental neuropsychology at the University of Oxford states: "My analysis of neurodevelopmental disorders found exactly the same pattern. The average "publication ratio" was much higher for rare than for common disorders." Problems such as specific language impairment, which is ten times more prevalent than autism gets comparatively less attention. However she believes she has found a formula for predicting the attention given to any given disorder. It turns out the level of attention is a product of the severity of the order and the number of people affected. "The amount of autism research was pretty much in line with the prediction, given its frequency and severity, but both SLI and dyslexia were under-researched. Even more strikingly neglected were the conditions of developmental dyscalculia, developmental coordination disorder, and speech sound disorder. In contrast, the amount of research on ADHD and Tourette syndrome was high in relation to their frequency and severity." Like anything else, we as humans tend to devote more time and energy when a problem is more emotional and nature rather than devoting time to the problems that when solved will do the most good. >