If you are just beginning your journey on understanding learning disabilities, then it would be wise to dispel some common misconceptions. First, learning disabilities are not a form of mental retardation or a sign of lower intelligence. People with learning disabilities are more often than not of normal intelligence but handicapped with a neurological disorder that has dramatic effects on their ability to learn. In common language, a person with a learning disability has a brain that is "wired" differently resulting in difficulties with learning.

The second important thing to remember is that there is no "cure" for a learning disability. A person diagnosed with a learning disability will have to deal with issues related to the disability their entire life (LD Online, 2007). There are, however, strategies and accommodations that can be made to assist people with learning disabilities to be successful in learning and life.

Last but certainly not least, people with learning disabilities can become successful adults. Actor Whoppi Goldberg and businessman Charles Schwab are two famous and successful people with learning disabilities. It is suspected that Albert Einstein, Walt Disney, General George Patton, and Vice President Nelson Rockefeller may have had learning disabilities as well as they either struggled to learn to read or had difficulty with reading their entire life (LD Online, 2007).

There are many different kinds of learning disabilities, but those dealing with academic skills are grouped into three main categories:
1.Dyslexia-reading disorder
2.Dysgraphia-writing disorder
3.Dyscalculia-arithmetic disorder

Learning disabilities in speech and language include:
1.Developmental articulation disorder
2.Developmental expressive language disorder
3.Auditory processing disorder

Other learning disabilities include:
1.Visual processing disorder
2.Dyspraxia-motor disorder
3.Nonverbal learning disorder
(Jaffe-Gill and de Benedictis, 2007)

Jaffe-Gill and de Benedictis in Learning Disabilities: Understanding the Types, Causes, Symptoms, and Diagnosis state that learning involves four stages of information processing:
Input-taking in information
Integration-interpreting information
Memory-storing information
Output-reproducing and using information

People with learning disabilities have trouble with one or more of these learning stages. Again

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