Learning difficulties screening web application

Abstract

Learning disabilities is a generic term that refers to a heterogeneous group of disorders. The aim of the present pilot study was to examine the efficacy of a new web neurocognitive screening tool, the 'askisi' that was developed to provide a brief screening measure for learning difficulties. Participants were twenty children who had been initially identified with learning difficulties and a control group of twenty students' age- and sex-matched with the children with learning difficulties. Group members' ages range between 8 and 12 years old. The set of tasks which all children had to undergo included 10 test that examined children's rreading, spelling, arithmetic and cognitive skills. In our effort to enhance the aforementioned procedure we created a client-server web application that implements its core characteristics. The results indicated that children with learning difficulties had significantly less correct responses in eight of the ten tasks, of our web screening test, compared with the control group, suggesting that the difference between the two groups could be practically important. Although time latency of learning disabled children was larger than their typical developing schoolmates (see Table 2), this difference did not reach statistical significance in five of the nine tasks measured. Overall, these results of this pilot study revealed strong convergent and discriminant evidence for the eight tasks of the 'askisi' screening measure, suggesting that this web application may provide a useful method to screen for learning difficulties in both research studies and clinical settings. © 2015 IEEE.