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Re: Functional Cognitive Disabilities (3rd Draft)

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From: Paul R. Bohman
Date: Nov 2, 2006 4:00PM

I'm now on my 3rd draft of functional cognitive disabilities (which
I've posted below, after my comments). This draft is similar to the
previous ones, with the following changes:

1. I separated "problem-solving" and "tolerance for change"
2. I dropped "intellectual confidence", because I think I've decided
that a lack of confidence is more of a psychological/emotional trait,
not necessarily caused by a disability, though there may be a
correlation.
3. I added the word "orientation" to make a new phrase: "Orientation
and contextual awareness"
4. I added "Cognitive speed", which refers to the tendency in some
individuals to have slower thought processes.
5. I added "Psychosocial development", which has reference to a
person's intellectual "maturity" in comparison to the population as a
whole.

Of these changes, I think the addition of "psychosocial development"
is the most important. The inclusion of this item in the list should
also help to bridge the gap between designing for children and
designing for adults whose developmental characteristics are quite
child-like. As web accessibility specialists, we like to tell people
that accessible design can accommodate the widest range of users. This
is usually true. However, designing for people of "lower"
developmental maturity is not at all like designing for adults. I
think this is where we have to admit that universal design is
practically impossible.

I should also mention that these categories may occur in isolation in
any given individual (i.e. a person may fit only one category), but
chances are that more than one category will apply to the same
individual. There is certainly some overlap between the categories
too. They are not mutually exclusive.

So here's my third draft:


1. MEMORY
(e.g. short term memory loss, and/or other memory deficits)

2. ATTENTION
(e.g. difficulty concentrating, focusing, or paying attention; impulse
control deficits;)

3. PROBLEM-SOLVING
(e.g. difficulty recovering from errors; low threshold for cognitive overload)

4. TOLERANCE FOR CHANGE
(discomfort with new or unexpected situations)

5. ABSTRACTION, INFERENCE, & DEDUCTION LOGIC
(e.g. difficulty with non-literal language and/or concepts, including
metaphors, puns, sarcasm, etc.; difficulty discerning implied meaning;
difficulty comprehending logical reasoning; difficulty identifying the
main point of the content)

6. CALCULATION LOGIC
(e.g. difficulty with mathematical procedures, operations, logical
sequences, and/or computations)

7. SENSORY PERCEPTION & ENCODING
(e.g. deficiencies in the brain's ability to perceive and/or encode
information received through vision and/or hearing, including
difficulties in assimilating or accommodating the information into a
person's knowledge sets, cognitive schema, mental models, etc.)

8. TEXT AND LANGUAGE PROCESSING
(e.g. limited vocabulary; the tendency to confuse words and/or
characters [as in some forms of dyslexia]; difficulties in associating
words with their meanings or to understand sentence construction [as
in some forms of aphasia], etc.)

9. TASK SEQUENCING AND COMPLETION
(e.g. difficulty understanding, initiating and/or following multi-step
procedures)

10. ORIENTATION AND CONTEXTUAL AWARENESS
(e.g. narrow focus; difficulty understanding or being aware of the
larger context; not understanding that something may be partially or
fully obscured from view and/or not realizing how to reveal hidden
objects or information)

11. CONCEPTUAL ORGANIZATION
(e.g. difficulty in recognizing, forming, or discriminating between
mental groupings of ideas, items, facts, etc.)

12. COGNITIVE SPEED
(slow thought processes)

13. PSYCHOSOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
(e.g. childlike tendencies; behaviors possibly regarded as "immature")



Undoubtedly I will make changes and adjustments over time, but this is
where the list stands at the moment.

--
Paul R. Bohman
Administrative Faculty, College of Education & Human Development
Lead Architect of Web Services, Office of Technology Support
Technology Coordinator, Kellar Institute for Human disAbilities
George Mason University