A 10-year-old boy makes repeated errors in reading and spelling with substitutions and omissions of letters. He is slow in reading with considerable hesitations.
All of the following features are expected in this child except:
C. This child is most likely having specific reading disorder. This is associated with higher prevalence of emotional disturbances and conduct disorder. It is more often seen in boys than girls. Minor soft neurological signs are frequently seen in children with this disorder, suggesting a neural developmental abnormality.
Reference:
The most consistent genetic locus implicated in specific reading disorder is:
A. Specific reading disorder is regarded to have significant genetic aetiology, with multiple genes contribute to the biological risk factor. The candidate regions are abbreviated as DYX1 to DYX9 on chromosomes 15q, 6p, 2p, 6q, 3cen, 18p, 11p, 1p, and Xq, respectively. Of these, the most consistent findings seem to be the role of chromosome 6.
Which of the following is a common condition in childhood that is not listed as a separate disorder in ICD-10?
B. Among the specific disorders of psychological development listed in the question, stuttering is not a separate diagnostic category in the current ICD-10, Chapter V. Stuttering has a high incidence between second and fourth years of life affecting 4% to 5% of the population with nearly equal sex ratio at the start. Normal developmental dysfluencies tend to occur in the larger linguistic units such as words, phrases, and sentences. In stutterers this occurs in repetitions of syllables and prolongation of sounds. Recovery usually occurs by adolescence and is more likely in girls; nearly 1 in 30 children have stuttering though only 1% of adolescents show stuttering. A familial component is noted in stuttering - the risk in first-degree relatives being more than three times the population risk. Sleepwalking, sibling rivalry disorder, tic disorder and autism are definite diagnostic categories in ICD-10.
All of the following are recognized associations with specific reading disorder except:
E. Deterioration of already acquired language skills is not seen in specific reading disorder or dyslexia. Neurodevelopmental basis for dyslexia is suggested by the similarity of certain symptoms in dyslexic children and the neurological syndrome of `visual word blindness’ that results from damage to the left inferior parieto-occipital region (more specifically, the left angular gyrus). This region is speculated to have a role in processing the optic images of letters; damage to this region may lead to defects in visual scanning. It is also noted that dyslexic children have poor or delayed brain lateralization, especially for language. The high incidence of left-handers, right-left confusion and the mirror-writing phenomenon noted in dyslexia can be considered as indirect support to this notion. Epileptic children may have higher incidence of dyslexia. General improvement with age suggests a brain maturational delay in the aetiology of dyslexia.
References:
The prevalence of autism is estimated to be around:
D. Preliminary surveys regarding epidemiology of autism reported 2 -5 cases of autism per 10 000 children. Wide variations have been reported in later studies ranging from 0·7 to 21 per 10 000 children (median 4–5 per 10 000). At present, at least one in 1000 children are estimated to have autism. Differences in methodology of surveys and wide variations in the definition of autism are the main reasons behind such variations. It is noted that boys have three-to-four-fold higher rates of autism.
Click to expand