Possibility to Prevent Learning Disabilities (LD) in School by Performing Special Developmental Intervention to them in Preschool period

The article deals with the problem of learning disabilities as an issue in pre-school education with emphasis on the need for early intervention. It outlines diagnostic and developing procedures elaborated in the course of experimental project on developing work with 5-years-old children, provides the detailed scheme of developmental testing. The article is illustrated with samples of learning tasks and multimedia learning materials. The results of empirical research of ability levels (in vocabulary, counting, verbal and visual memory, verbal regualtion, drawing and attention) in children participated in the project compared with control group are shown. Validity of this diagnostic system for identification of children with learning disabilities as well as for prevention is discussed.

This emphasis on “Early identification and Early education” in LD education together with the serious practical difficulties to remediate LD encountered when working with school age children, made us change the focus of our studies radically. Thus, instead of aiming at the remediation of LD in elementary school, we began to study ways to develop a diagnostic system to identify children having high risk of LD and to develop teaching programs by which we could form and develop school readiness in the preschool period.

In 2000, we began a new project entitled “Development of Language-Cognitive Teaching Programs for the Prevention of LD in the Preschool Period”. This project has the following three purposes: (1) to develop a diagnostic system which can identify children at high risk of LD at age five, (2) to develop a complex Hiragana literacy teaching program which includes a) a Hiragana reading and writing program, b) a syntax program, and c) a lexico-semantic program, and (3) to promote development of cognitive skills in the following domains: a) figural-spatial representation, b) basic concepts of number and quantity, c) perception and attention and so on. We established a diagnostic-teaching system for prevention of LD by starting special intervention from the preschool period. Over the last 8 years we have tried experimental training studies three times, first with 5 year-old-children in 2001-2003, second with 4 year-old children in 2004-2006, third again with 5 year-old-children in 2006-2008. As a result of our experimental teaching studies, we confirmed that it was theoretically and practically possible to prevent the emergence of LD in elementary school by performing developmental diagnosis of risk of LD at the preschool 5 year-old period and by carrying out the developmental program aimed at the formation and development of school readiness from that stage.

The purposes of this paper are first to outline these projects and to discuss the possibilities of prevention of LD by detection of high risk of LD in preschool and by providing special teaching and training based on the traditional ideas of developmental education of the Vygotsky School.

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