Nonverbal Learning Disabilities: 
A Distinct Group Within Our Population

by Tom Humphries, PhD, CPsych
 

The purpose of this article is to familiarize parents and professionals with a specific profile of learning difficulty referred to as nonverbal learning disability.

A common learning disability profile is represented by the individual who has poorer verbal abilities but average, or even above average, nonverbal or visual-spatial abilities.  On a test such as the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children - Third Edition (WISC-III), an individual presenting with this particular profile would typically have a lower Verbal than Performance IQ, reflecting their verbal weaknesses in contrast to their higher visual-spatial functioning.  Widespread academic difficulties in the language arts, including problems in reading, spelling, and written composition, are commonly associated with this profile because the individual lacks the verbal strengths to succeed in these areas.

Although nonverbal learning disabilities are far less often seen than verbal ones, the nonverbal profile may be characterized by more severe difficulties that can be harder to understand and remediate.

The visual perceptual and motor difficulties that are typical of a nonverbal learning disability are felt to result in a distortion of many aspects of basic experience.  Thus the individual may perceptually misinterpret everyday stimuli, be awkward motorically and in moving their body through space, and have difficulty integrating information in space and time.

For an individual with a nonverbal learning disability, the interpretation and expression of social cues such as facial expressions and body language can become a major problem and lead to confusion and social rejection.  Academically, visual-spatial difficulties can make the learning of mathematics a major challenge.  Although the individual's automatic use of oral language is intact so that their speech and use of grammar "sounds" fluent, if one listens closely the meaning that is imparted to certain words and relationships may be distorted because the experience that the language represents is itself distorted.  Thus, specific aspects of oral and written comprehension may suffer, including reading comprehension, even though word identification or the strict decoding of words in reading may be average or quite strong.  On the WISC-R the individual's Performance IQ is typically significantly below their Verbal IQ due to their severe visual-spatial weaknesses.

The individual with a nonverbal learning disability has serious needs because so many aspects of their functioning are affected.  Unlike the individual with verbal weaknesses for whom the learning of language arts is difficult, but social and sports activities may be a relative strength that helps to compensate, in the case of nonverbal disabilities both social and athletic skills, as well as certain aspects of academic learning, are impeded so that the individual is hampered in both academic and non-academic areas. 

Finding a compensating strength can be more difficult for these individuals.

In the classroom and home settings the individual with a nonverbal learning disability may exhibit inattentiveness and poor organizational skills, but not because they have a primary attention deficit disorder.  Their inability to integrate and interpret information both socially and academically can result in poor organization and make it difficult for them to remain attentive when trying to do tasks that they do not fully understand.  They can be misidentified as a primary behaviour problem or, due to their tendency to cling to the familiar and routine as a way of coping with becoming overloaded with information, they may erroneously be seen as slower in their overall functioning.

In a recent research study conducted at the Hospital for Sick Children's Child Development Clinic, we examined questionnaire ratings to evaluate the degree to which teachers were able to identify the characteristics of nonverbal learning disabilities and distinguish this disorder from attention deficit.  This attempt at "validating" nonverbal learning disabilities "in the field" based on teachers' perceptions was felt to be important since the disorder has been described mainly medically or clinically to date, and understanding how teachers perceive it is a critical first step in starting to assist them with programming to this profile in the classroom.

Our results suggested that teachers see both children with nonverbal learning disabilities and attention deficit as having more language problems than average achieving controls, but did not rate the two disordered groups as differing from each other in their language functioning.  Both disordered groups were also viewed as having more attention problems than their average achieving counterparts, but the attention deficit children were rated as having more major attention problems while the children with nonverbal learning disabilities received a rating of more minor problems.

Social interaction was viewed as problematic for both disordered groups compared to average achievers.  However, children with nonverbal learning disabilities were viewed as having problems of a more internalizing (e.g., social withdrawal, worrying) nature, while externalizing (e.g., disrupting, fighting) problems were noted more frequently for attention deficit children.

These distinctions strongly suggested that teachers do see children with nonverbal disabilities as functioning differently in the classroom than average achieving children and from those with other difficulties, such as attention and behaviour problems.

In future research the goal will be to clarify these distinctions further in order to facilitate teachers' identification of the nonverbal profile and capitalize on the distinctions made to design more effective remedial and support programming for this very needy subtype.

 

Copyright: Learning Disabilities Association of Ontario, 1993

This article originally appeared in the Autumn 1993 issue of the Communique, the newsletter of the Learning Disabilities Association of Ontario, and is posted here with their permission.