Comparison of the efficacy of cognitive rehabilitation and neurofeedback on specificlearning disorder among primary school children of Tehran, Iran

Introduction: specific learning disorder is an impairment in general academic skill that is identifiedin reading, mathematics and written expression fields; besides, it creates a major problem in academicachievement, job performance or daily life activities. the present study was aimed to compare theefficacy of cognitive rehabilitation with neurofeedback on specific learning disorder (math, readingand spelling) in primary school children in district 5 of tehran.materials and methods: the methodology of this research was quasi-experimental with pre-testpost-test design with control group. using the learning disability evaluation scale, 45 patients inthree groups were selected as experimental group (15 patients for cognitive rehabilitation and 15patients for neurofeedback) and control group (15 patients). then, the interventions were provided tothe experimental group and the control group used the usual school training. pre-test and post-testwere taken from both experimental and control groups, after the intervention on the experimentalgroup, the pre-test and post-test results of all three groups were compared with each other. thelearning disability evaluation scale (ldes-r2), developed by mccarney, was used in the study.multivariate analysis of covariance, with spss 22 software was used for data analysis.results: the results of the study showed that after the intervention, the treatment group was improvedin the specific learning variables of reading, writing and math (p < 0.001). and the effect of cognitiverehabilitation approach was greater than the efficacy of neurofeedback (p < 0.001).conclusion: by improving specific learning disorders in children, their problems might be reducedand the effect of treatment might be improved. though, in case of specific learning disorders in thechildren, we would need much more thorough treatments.