Correct Answer - Option 2 : Samuel Kirk
Learning disabilities is a general term that refers to a heterogeneous group of disorders manifested by significant difficulties in the acquisition and use of listening, speaking, reading, writing, reasoning, or mathematical abilities.
- The person who has a learning disability may have a rigid personality, cognitive ability, and development characteristics also.
- It is a problem that is related to one or more psychological processes of the children in the use of oral and written language and understanding the meaning.
- This kind of disability is speaking, reading, writing, spelling, or mathematical calculations.
- This disability is related to perceptual conditions, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia, developmental problems.
- But who have a visual, hearing, or motor disability, mental retardation, emotional disorder, or social and economical barrier are not included under the term––learning disability.
History suggests that the term learning disabilities originated with and became popularized by Dr. Samuel Kirk based on his writings in the early 1960s and comments that were made at April 6, 1963, Conference on Exploration inti Problems of the Perceptually Handicapped Child.
- His proposed label was "enthusiastically received and helped to unite the participants into an organization known as the Association for Children with Learning Disabilities, the forerunner of today's Learning Disabilities Association" (Learner, 2000).
- Dr. Kirk (1963) said in a conference at Chicago – "A learning disability refers to retardation disorder, or delayed development in one or more of the processes of speech, language, reading, writing, arithmetic, or other school subject resulting from a psychological handicap caused by a possible cerebral dysfunction and/or emotional or behavioral disturbances. It is not the result of mental retardation, sensory deprivation, or cultural and Instructional factors".
- Kirk also said that LD refers to retardation, a disorder of delayed development in one are more of the processes of special language, reading, spelling, written or arithmetic resulting from a possible cerebral dysfunction and emotional or behavioral disturbance.
| B.F Skinner |
Operant Conditioning |
| Sigmund Freud |
Theory of psychosexual development |
| Wilhelm Wundt |
Father of Experimental Psychology |
From the above, we can say that Samuel Kirk was the first person to use the term 'Learning Disabilities'.
