Nonverbal Learning Disabilities Essay

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Learning disabilities are a group of disabilities that can affect a person’s ability to receive, process, store, and respond to information. These difficulties cannot be explained by health, culture, or environmental factors. There are many students in schools with these leaning disabilities in both the academic and non-academic settings that are getting overlooked. The students that are most commonly being overlooked are those that suffer from Nonverbal Learning Disabilities (NVLD). In 1967, Helmer Rudolf Mykleburst and Doris Johnson, researchers on learning disabilities, were referred to a residential group of children who did not have verbal language problems but had a range of symptoms that interfered with the everyday school functions …show more content…

The right hemisphere has a greater capacity for handling complex visual perceptual information between different regions of the brain and better process new information (Sands and Schwartz). Byron Rourke, a leading investigator in the disabilities has proposed that NVLD involves a destruction or disfunction of the white matter that is in the brain. Damage to the right hemisphere can result in complex syndromes. This includes attentional disorders, visual-perceptual disorders, affective and emotional difficulties; things that are often present in a child with Nonverbal Learning Disabilities. These neuropsychologial deficits contain the children’s capacity to function in the academic, social, emotional to vocational domain. The brain dysfunctions affect the children’s behaviors, social interactions, feels about themselves and others, and the emerging personality patterns …show more content…

Both of the disabilities are neuro-developmental abnormalities involving functions of the right cerebral hemisphere (NLD Ontario). There is overlapping between the two, this includes physical awkwardness, social intrusiveness, and social isolation. Studies that have been conducted by the Yale Child Study Group have suggested that up to eighty-percent of children who meet the criteria for Aspergers also have NVLD. No studies have been done in the other direction, but it is likely that it is the same. Both have no delays in cognitive development and speech. Early verbal ability is one of the sign of Nonverbal Learning Disabilities, they are extremely verbal and early readers. 20 out of 21 similarities including a verbal over spatial discrepancy. The largest problem in both disorders are social relationships, where they are often misunderstood and accused of rudeness, laziness, lack of acting, and having a poor attitude. Although there are these similarities between the two, they are different. Both syndrome have unique characteristics, but both have great

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