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Dyspraxia (Sensory Integration Disorder):

Developmental dyspraxia is a disorder characterized by an impairment in the ability to plan and carry out sensory and motor tasks. Generally, individuals with the disorder appear "out of sync" with their environment. Symptoms vary and may include poor balance and coordination, clumsiness, vision problems, perception difficulties, emotional and behavioral problems, difficulty with reading, writing, and speaking, poor social skills, poor posture, and poor short-term memory. Although individuals with the disorder may be of average or above average intelligence, they may behave immaturely.

Assessments for dyspraxia typically require a developmental history, detailing ages at which significant developmental milestones, such as crawling and walking, occurred. Motor skills screening includes activities designed to indicate dyspraxia, including balancing, physical sequencing, touch sensitivity, and variations on walking activities. A baseline motor assessment establishes the starting point for developmental intervention programs. Comparing children to normal rates of development may help to establish areas of significant difficulty.

However, research in the BJSE has shown that knowledge is severely limited in many who should be trained to recognise and respond to various difficulties, including Developmental Coordination Disorder, Dyslexia and DAMP. The earlier that difficulties are noted and timely assessments occur, the quicker intervention can begin. A teacher or GP could miss a diagnosis if they are only applying a cursory knowledge.

Various areas of development can be affected by developmental dyspraxia and many or all can persist into adulthood. Often various coping strategies are developed, and these can be enhanced through physiotherapy.

Speech and language

Developmental verbal dyspraxia is a type of ideational dyspraxia, causing linguistic or phonological impairment. This is the favoured term in the UK; however it is also sometimes referred to as articulatory dyspraxia and in the USA the usual term is apraxia of speech.

    Key problems include:
  1. Difficulties controlling the speech organs.
  2. Difficulties making speech sounds
  3. Difficulty sequencing sounds
  4. Within a word
  5. Difficulty controlling breathing and phonation.
  6. Slow language development.
  7. Difficulty with feeding.

Fine motor control
Difficulties with fine motor co-ordination lead to problems with handwriting, which may be due to either ideational or ideo-motor difficulties. Problems associated with this area may include:

  1. Learning basic movement patterns.
  2. Developing a desired writing speed.
  3. The acquisition of graphemes – e.g. the letters of the Latin alphabet, as well as numbers.
  4. Hand aching while writing

Whole body movement, coordination, and body image
Issues with gross motor coordination mean that major developmental targets including walking, running, climbing and jumping are affected. One area of difficulty involves associative movement, where a passive part of the body moves or twitches in response to a movement in an active part. For example, the support arm and hand twitching as the dominant arm and hand move, or hands turning inwards or outwards to correspond with movements of the feet. Problems associated with this area may include:

  1. Poor timing.
  2. Poor balance (sometimes even falling over in mid-step). Tripping over one's own feet is also not uncommon.
  3. Difficulty combining movements into a controlled sequence.
  4. Difficulty remembering the next movement in a sequence.
  5. Problems with spatial awareness, or proprioception.
  6. Some people with dyspraxia have trouble picking up and holding onto simple objects due to poor muscle tone.
  7. This disorder can cause an individual to be clumsy to the point of knocking things over and bumping into people accidentally.
  8. Some people with Dyspraxia have difficulty in determining left from right.
  9. Cross-laterality, ambidexterity, and a shift in the preferred hand are also common in people with dyspraxia.[citation needed]
  10. People with Dyspraxia may also have trouble determining the distance between them and other objects.

National Center for Learning Disabilities - http://www.ncld.org/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=466
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke - http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/dyspraxia/dyspraxia.htm