How do phobias affect learning?
I have to do this research on phobias and how they affect learning in special needs children but I can’t find anything on the web about it.
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phobias about performing in front of others and agoraphobia would…they would stunt their interaction with others and limit what the could learn…it would affect them differently depending on what they were learning and their particular learning style…also fear of failure keeps many ppl from even trying something new…
First off, phobias are a learned behavior. We come into this world with no fear and slowly develop fears after learning conditioned responses. In fact fear and what is found to be scary is societal and are learned after learning societal dogmas.
Second, I would suggest looking up Baby Albert. This is a popular case study discussed in first year psych courses. And this should give you enough info to at least make a correlation to learned phobias with concern to special needs children.
First, special needs children run the gamut from minor developmentally disabled to autistic to many others. Since we don’t know what’s in the mind of a child who can’t or won’t tell us, assuming the insight about the fear/phobia is there to begin with, it’s a good idea to think outside the box. Maybe at home a reluctance to do math, finances, etc., is seen in the family and older siblings. So the child can pick up on verbal and nonverbal cues and develop avoidance fear to numbers or counting or simple aarithmetic. More to the point, a fear of snakes, that so many people seem to have, could, for a special needs child, extend to other animals in school like frogs or hamsters.
Phobias among small children, I have a hard time thinking there’s nothing on the Net. Try pubmed, or medlineplus.gov for starters. There are phobia societies, even for specific common phobias, to be looked at as well. With regard to your question, though, the age, condition, and self-insight of the child could be relevant. If you are establishing a teacher’s relationship to such a child, there may be patterns to their fears or avoidances. As to when these aversions turn into phobias, I leave that to the experts.
The only way that a phobia can arise in school is when a trauma of some sort occurs. This can be anything from getting told "No" by a daycare worker, or watching a television show where a student gets yelled at by a teacher.
The phobia will preoccupy the young child if he/she feels that they are unsafe and need to be on alert. These children have the predisposition to over-react, throw fits for internal issues, and have learning disabilities anyway. The child will respond to what their mind tells them to do, or what the phobia tells them to do, in a new situation, which can enhance their wanting to learn, or like I stated before, make them want to be on alert.
The way that one would try to battle that would be to give the child extra care and attention, which is difficult seeing that they already need more that usual for their conditions. The caretaker should assure the student that it is okay to be here and that nothing bad will happen. The words, "I promise" have great meaning to a child and are extremely useful to calm a frightened child.
The trauma of the child can be great though. The only way to try to combat trauma, which is especially difficult for special needs children, is to talk. Ask them why they are scared, and what you can do to help them. If they choose not to respond, stay near to them and calm them. You would then ask them a second time and if they still do not respond, stay by their side. Special-needs children have different mental processes when it comes to trust. The only way, sometimes, to gain their trust in difficult times, is to show that you love them (in a professional way, but similar to a child-parent relationship). Give them small gifts occasionally (like candies) to show that you like them, and they will like you back. Once you feel as though you have gained their trust, ask them again. When they give you an answer, show them that what they believe is not true, or is out of porportion.
You may need to discuss this with them several times, but since they trust you, they will believe you and take everything you say to heart.
Social phobias, such as extreme shyness, though, are harder to change. They take a lot longer to gain a person’s trust and then take even longer to take to heart what that person says. While these phobias are extremely difficult to change, they must be treated the same way as any other phobia with time and trust.
I hope this was helpful!