Comparison of the Effectiveness of Cognitive Rehabilitation Training and Vestibular Stimulation on Neuropsychological Characteristics of Children with Specific Learning Disorder

Introduction: Learning disabilities in children affect many cognitive and behavioral areas, which ultimately lead to reduced social relationships and a lack of academic achievement. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of cognitive rehabilitation training and vestibular stimulation on neuropsychological characteristics of children with a specific learning disorder. Methods: The research method was semi-experimental with pre and post-test for two groups of experimental and control. The statistical population of this study consisted of all female students with special learning disorders with a diagnostic file in the Center for Learning Disabilities in Sari in the academic year of 2020. Of these, 45 were selected by the available method and randomly assigned to three groups of 15 individuals. For the first experimental group, the Powell (2017) Cognitive Rehabilitation Protocol for Children with Special Learning Disabilities was performed in 8 sessions of 45 minutes, for the second experimental group, the protocol  of vestibular stimulation of Ganz (1997) was performed with 8 sessions of 45 minutes and no intervention was performed for the control group. The instrument used was the Teacherschr('39') Neuropsychological Characteristics Questionnaire. Data were analyzed using a multivariate analysis of covariance with spss18 software. Results: The findings showed that cognitive rehabilitation and vestibular stimulation affect the neuropsychological characteristics of children with specific learning disabilities [p≤0.001], but cognitive rehabilitation treatment with an effect of 0.988 is more effective then the effect of 0.942 was obtained from the vestibular stimulation group [p≤0.001]. Conclusion: The findings of this study emphasized the role of cognitive education rather than motor education on the neuropsychological characteristics of children with special learning disabilities, which can provide practical implications to therapists and counselors for the treatment of pediatric neuropsychological characteristics.