New research begins to focus on therapeutic interventions on the underlying cause of learning disabilities

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With the background of 11% of total United States government spending for disability support in 2006, the authors from Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School highlight the financial and social imperatives to improve services for people with learning disabilities. They remind us that most of the current focus on research has been on environmental [read the full story…]

Self injurious behaviour prevalent in individuals with learning disabilities and autism spectrum disorder

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Self injurious behaviour is usually defined as behaviour that directly results in physical harm to an individual and includes such behaviours as hand biting, head slapping, picking at skin, gouging or striking the body or eating inedible material.  In addition, researchers have begun to include display of repetitive movements even though they may not immediately [read the full story…]

Physiological arousal might predict severity of autistic behaviour in fragile X syndrome

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The researchers in this study were interested in looking at differences in physiological arousal between infants and toddlers with fragile X syndrome and those with typical development. They looked at physiological predictors early in development to autism severity later in development in fragile X syndrome. Participants were 31 male children with fragile X syndrome aged [read the full story…]

People with both fragile x syndrome and autism had unique profile of vulnerability

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Fragile X syndrome is a common cause of inherited learning disability and can affect one in 2000 males and one in 4000 females and is due to a mutation at an inherited fragile site on the X chromosome. The researchers in this study were interested in looking at the behavioural profile of people with fragile [read the full story…]

Behavioural interventions impact on quality of life for children with fragile x syndrome

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The supporters of children with fragile X syndrome often report behaviour that challenges as a major concern. The authors of this small-scale, multiple baseline design study set out to explore whether behaviourally-based interventions might result in reductions in problem behaviour and improvements in the quality of life for 3 children with fragile X syndrome and [read the full story…]

Review suggests new insights into understanding of fragile X syndrome offered by research

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The author of this literature review set out to explore the literature on the associations between human genome variations and psychological functioning in people with learning disabilities with a specific focus on recent developments reported in studies of people with fragile X syndrome. He suggests that there is now substantial evidence that individuals of all [read the full story…]