Dr. Harsh Vardhan Assures Scientists that the Department Science & Technology will Support any Project which is for the Benefit of Mankind Specially Children
India makes a new leap in cognitive sciences by indigenously developing Dyslexia screening tools in four Indian languages including English. The Minister for Science and Technology and Earth Sciences Dr. Harsh Vardhan today released a book on Specific Learning Disorder: Indian Scenario and the screening tools for Teachers and Assessment Tools for Psychologists for Dyslexia.
The book titled Specific Learning Disorder: Indian Scenario was written by Dr Rajesh Sagar, Raman Deep Pattanayak, Manju Mehta of the Department of Psychiatry All India Institute of Medical Sciences, (AIIMS), New Delhi. This project was supported by the Department of Science and Technology Govt. of India. The book gives us Knowledge on the subject of learning disabilities particularly Specific Learning Disorder (SLD).
The Minister in his speech on the occasion congratulated the authors and their teams for coming out with such useful book and also related tools about learning problems in children. He also appealed to all to take the knowledge and information in these two compilations to all those who have the ability and education to use them for the benefit of such children. There are almost 35 million children in the country suffering from this specific learning disability.
The assessment of Dyslexia is carried out using a series of age appropriate, culturally valid psychological tests on the child in the native language.
Since dyslexia is a learning disability, the teacher is the best person to identify it. DALI is a comprehensive screening and assessment battery for children with or at risk for dyslexia, between the classes of 1 to 5.
Two screening tools for dyslexia for school teachers have been developed
JST (Junior Screening Tool) classes (1-2) (5 to 7 years).
MST (Middle Screening Tool) - classes (3-5) (8 to10 years).
DALI was developed at the National Brain Research Centre (PI: Nandini Chatterjee Singh) in India, under a project supported by the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India. It was standardized and validated across four languages (Hindi, Marathi, Kannada and English) across schools at five centres (4840 children from classes 1-5).
Dr. Harsh Vardhan assured the scientists that the department Science & Technology will support any such project which is for the benefit of mankind specially children. Most of these Scientists involved in these projects have been working in association with the National Brain Research Centre under the Department of Biotechnology of the Ministry of Science & Technology.
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