Early Detection and Diagnosis of Potential Learning Disabilities

摘要

The project responds to extensive evidence that electrophysiological measures have the potential capability to provide a means for accurate and objective differential diagnosis of a variety of important, presently inaccessible types of brain function. Main goals were: (1) to develop an automatic digital computer system capable of acquisition of electrophysiological data of excellent technical quality without the need for highly trained personnel; (2) to develop a battery of computer-administered tests which would provide estimates of a spectrum of brain functions related to sensory, perceptual, and cognitive processes; (3) to devise ways for the computer to generate data tapes containing a sufficiently detailed, encoded protocol so that the subsequent analysis would be automatic, requiring minimum operator intervention; (4) to develop analytic methods which would reduce the voluminous qualitative data yielded by this electrophysiological test battery to derived numbers representing its essential features and amenable to treatment by multivariate statistical methods; and (5) to apply this new technology to the study of a sufficiently large sample of normal and learning disabled (LD) children. Main segments of the text are devoted to the following topics: analyses of the EEG conditions contained in the neurometric test battery and their relation to psychometric indices; evoked potential conditions; overview of major differences between normal and LD groups on the NB; multivariate analyses; and infants' quantitative electrophysiological evaluation.