Friday (3/9) the Center for Life-Span Development (CLSD) again held the International Online Summer Course series. The series of summer courses with the big theme “Disability and Lifespan Development: Indonesia and Global Perspectives” has entered its 10th day. The title raised in this session is “Learning Disabilities from Neuropsychological Perspectives”.
The event took place from 17.00 WIB until 19.00 WIB. The event was attended by 70 participants from various countries.
The presenter of this event is Dr. Supra Wimbarti, M.Sc., Ph.D., Psikolog, lecturer at the Faculty of Psychology who is also an expert in neuropsychology, child development, child mental development, as well as cognitive & affective. The event was moderated by Ammik Kisriyani, S.Psi., M.A. It talks a lot about children with learning difficulties from a neuroscience point of view.
In this event, four main points were discussed, namely dyslexia and dyscalcula as learning disorders, neural correlations in learning disorders, treatment and intervention for learning disorders, and how to handle learning disorders in Indonesia.
Dyslexia and dyscalculia are two types of learning disorders that are almost similar. In his presentation, Supra explained the difference between the two. People with dyslexia usually have difficulties in the process of learning to read.
“Dyslexia is a neurobiological disorder that causes a marked disturbance in the development of basic reading and spelling skills,” said Supra.
Both dyslexia and dyscalculia are usually identified as neurodevelopmental disorders. If dyslexia is related to the reading process, difficulty learning to operate arithmetic is also called dyscalculia.
“Dyscalculia is a specific learning disorder that affects the normal acquisition of arithmetic skills,” explains Supra. Supra further explained that difficulties in arithmetic will make it difficult for someone to be able to learn mathematics in a more complex stage because arithmetic is a basic skill.
Some people can still live their lives well even though they have dyslexia. Even some of them have good leadership skills such as Winston Churchill, George Smith Patton, J.F. Kennedy. In addition, they also have out of the box thinking and creative souls such as Deddy Corbuzier and Ted Turner, and some became scientists and inventors such as Thomas Alva Edison and Albert Einstein.
In his presentation, Supra also explained several intervention programs for people with dyslexia. One that is already popular is the Orton Gillingham method. The Faculty of Psychology UGM through the alumni of the Doctoral Program students have also succeeded in formulating a measuring tool to detect dyslexia, namely the “Dyslexia Early Detection Test” by Dr. Satrio Budi Wibowo, S.Psi., M.A. and “Indonesian Child Dyslexia Test” by Dr. Trubus Raharjo, S.Psi., M.Sc., Psychologist.