An under-diagnosed condition, dysmnesia causes memory disorders. Usually seen as the consequence of another DYS disorder, it struggles to be recognised as a condition in its own right. In fact, it doesn’t appear in the Medline thesaurus and has no precise definition. A closer look at this disorder, whose impact on school learning and social relationships is clear.
Dysmnesia, or memory-related difficulties
While memory is made up of a set of independent systems, they work in close interaction: there is short-term memory and the 4 systems of long-term memory – namely, the perceptual representation system (storing the structural representation of words, objects, faces, etc.), procedural memory (automated action procedures that are hard to put into words), episodic memory (memories of personally experienced events), and semantic memory (general knowledge about the world).
Appearing naturally during a child’s development, dysmnesia refers to disorders that impair one or more of these types of memory. Note that cases resulting from a lesion (stroke, head injury, etc.) or an intellectual deficit are excluded and not included in this diagnosis, even though they produce similar symptoms.
How dysmnesia shows up at school
Like other DYS disorders (dyslexia, dyscalculia, dyspraxia…), dysmnesia expresses itself through a wide range of symptoms, since the memory deficit can affect immediate, short-term and/or long-term memory. Persistent, these difficulties inevitably have significant repercussions on school learning.
In practice, a child affected by this disorder may frequently lose personal belongings. They may also forget a lesson learned just the day before, or the instructions given for an exercise, forcing them to re-read them several times. Similarly, they may find it hard to understand the content of a long text, forgetting the first sentences, even without any actual reading difficulties.
The impact of dysmnesia on school learning
Children with dysmnesia face real difficulties with school learning, not to mention relational difficulties with teachers. Teachers may reasonably think that the child didn’t take the time to learn their lessons. At home, parents can face the same issue, when they don’t accept this seemingly “scatterbrained” side of their child, which gets unfairly attached to them.
More broadly, in all social interactions, these children struggle to follow a class, a presentation, or even a conversation.
When diagnosed early, they can begin therapy with speech and language therapists, sometimes supplemented by the involvement of other specialised professionals, such as occupational therapists. Very often, they are guided towards manual or practical careers, towards learning “hands-on” skills.
Don’t hesitate to explore the range of options available to help your child with dysmnesia, by consulting one of these professionals on the Ora-Visio platform, which specialises in supporting children with DYS disorders. Faced with these lasting difficulties, their goal is to give each child personalised keys to work around their symptoms and live as normal a life as possible. Not knowing the origin of the disorder makes it harder to treat.
