• Question: Do people with disabilities learn skills the same way as people who don't have disabilities, does it just take them longer to do the actual action, because it's harder for them?

    Asked by cupcake to Stu, Helen on 21 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Helen O'Connor

      Helen O'Connor answered on 21 Jun 2011:

      In terms of movement, it depends on the disability. I have worked with wheelchair athletes who have spinal cord injuries (SCI) – some of them are unable to move their arms or legs (quadraplegic) and some of them are able to move their arms but not their legs (paraplegic), it all depends on where abouts on the spine their injury is. Athletes with SCI, are also unable to control their body temperature which means when they get too hot they are unable to cool down, and when they get too cold they are unable to warm up: so in the Beijing Olympics for example, paralympians had to be sprayed with water etc in order to help them cool down.
      As a psychologist, I have seen able bodied and disabled athletes use the same kinds of ‘mental skills’ – they have focus, committment, confidence, they can control their fear and pull out their best performances under pressure. The mind of an elite athlete – with or without disabilities seems to be pretty mentally tough!

    • Photo: Stuart Mourton

      Stuart Mourton answered on 21 Jun 2011:

      In regard to individuals with learning disabilities, that is exactly what some of my research is looking into now. It’s a fairly new area so we are just starting to find out the smililarities and differences in the learning patterns. It is already known though that individuals with learning disabilities respond much better to visual instruction than verbal, so that is an area where training can be altered to improve their skill acquisition. more than that we don’t really know, hopefully we will soon though!!

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