NonVerbal Language Disorders

Hi,
I was about to post a question of my own about this disorder (and will separately) when I saw your post.

This is a relatively new disorder, from the point of view of identification and labelling, with less research done on it than in other areas of LD.

A possible explanation of the fact that social problems are not always present is found in a book I just read by a psychologist who specializes in this area. On the basis of clinical experience, she identifies subtypes of this disorder, specifically, Perceptual NLD, Social NLD, Written Expressive NLD, and Attentional NLD. The author states that while NLD subtypes may have features in common, and some children may reflect elements of more than one type, the four differ enough from each other to be designated as different types, requiring separate recommendations.

This to me makes perfect sense as a possible way of getting a handle on this perplexing disorder. For instance, my son has no social problems (beyond a bit of shyness), has good friends, good relationships with peers, good communication and listening skills, understands figurative language etc. I recall other parents on these boards having noted strong athletic skills in their NLD children. I have often felt in visiting the NLD online type boards that I did not belong there simply because the Social NLDs seem to predominate and, in general, the types of problems they share are not ones I can relate to.

There needs to be a lot more research done in this area.

Jan L

It’s interesting that they started capitalizing it. If it were just nld, then it could imply any sort of deficit in nonverbal learning— including social skills, math, coordination, visual motor skills, etc. The way it is now capitalized it would imply a single entity, more a syndrome like AS is.
So if you have a kid with math problems, coordination difficulty and adequate social skills or some other permutation you would still have a nld but perhaps not an NVLD.

Michelbust (sp?) and Johnson first identified several nlds in their old text circa 1960s or so. They describe some other problems I have not seen for ex. inability to understand pictures. I have only seen that severity with kids in the more severe autistic population.

I was initially dxed this and it was NOT capitalized.
This was at Northwestern where D. Johnson was at the time, btw.

—des

I forgot to add that the fact that this seems to be popping up a lot lately is, I think, that it’s been under-identified in the past. For example, in a first assessment, my son was given every label but NLD, though the 20+ point verbal v. nonverbal split was noted.

The term cropped up verbally when we met with the psychologist and assessor, but does not appear in the report.

The assessor, before she read the book I just read, along with one or two others on NLD, seems to have tended towards viewing NLD as pretty much an unmitigated disaster with a rotten prognosis generally and perhaps shyed away from using the label.

As someone with NLD myself (the attentional type, I suspect, like my son) I know this diagnosis is not necessarily an unmitigated disaster as I have been pretty successful, overall, academically, socially, and occupationally speaking—which is not to say that this disorder hasn’t caused me problems! (Victoria, who appears on these boards, meets the NLD criteria for diagnosis, she says, but has a graduate degree in math!)

This may be splitting hairs, but I’ve just noticed my use of the word “disorder” in my nld posts and wondered, woah! where did that come from? It’s a category of learning disabilities, and I don’t like the word disorder because that sounds too pervasive to be accurate. Did I use it because I’ve heard it/read it in this context? (For ex. I read Kathryn Stewart’s book which I’d check right now, but I’ve loaned it out.)

Stewart kind of lumps nld together with Asperger’s as being different but nevertheless overlapping. The expert I’ve just read sees a key difference.

Though Mykleburst and Johnson may have identified nlds in the 80s, I don’t think there’s been a lot of work done in this area since.

A problem in science in general — there are “lumpers” and there are “splitters”. Lumpers like to lump cases together in large general categories; splitters like to split everything up into multiple subtypes and sub-subtypes and …
The problem with too much lumping is that your categories are too general and broad to be of much use, like just categorizing a child as LD; OK, but what are the problems and what kind of treatment do you need? Just saying “LD” doesn’t give you a handle on the situation.
The problem with too extreme splitting is that you end up with millions of categories and every kid in a separate category: A. is attentional and mathematical nld with comorbid sid and apraxia — since no other kid you will ever meet will have the exact same diagnosis, you can’t get any programs or make any decisions to help this child without re-inventing everything from the ground up.
In order to be useful as a categorizing system, something like five to twenty category labels is a good level. I forget where I read this, sorry, but it makes sense from a practical perspective.

****************************************************
Does this sound like something like NLD to you?

My own experience:
I have totally undetermined handedness. I switch the drill and the screwdriver and the paintbrush to the left hand to get into those corners; automatically, all the time.
Given verbal directions, I still have to stop and think for a moment, mentally review both hands and image them in my brain, before I am positive which is left and which is right.
I could read fluently four years before I could write legibly at all. Didn’t actually write willingly until after university.
Couldn’t keyboard effectively until my thirties; still use six-finger hunt-and-peck
My fine coordination goes kaput, fingers stiffen up and hit the wrong direction, under any kind of stress.
I have “cocktail-party syndrome” with my hearing; hear just fine in isolation but have real trouble sorting out signal from noise.
I get extremely fatigued after even half an hour of committee meetings with multiple speakers, completely fade out of attention.
As a child, I had “figure-ground” problems (This might be part of what was meant when someone talked about visual nld??)
I have huge difficulty remembering both names and faces and which name goes to which face.
I can draw many things but can’t draw faces at all. Have trouble visualizing faces.
I have very very poor organizational skills with paper and other physical objects.
I have no natural time sense at all; will work for a while on something and find that five hours have passed.
I have not-too-good social skills, too many bloopers to list. Either too much attention or too little. Fast changes make some people quite nervous.
I was *extremely* shy as a child, still have the same feelings but have learned to say what the heck and work over them.

I used to think I was particularly good in math and OK in languages; that’s what my school marks and teachers said. In fact it’s the opposite, found out in education grad school. The language ability must have been hidden in school because of the fight with writing and difficulty with personal communication.

On the other hand, the lack of directionality is in a weird way not a bug but a feature; can visualize things in 3D, reverse them, turn inside out, etc; when I can find a victim … er … student, I teach 3D calculus. Also helps with the renovations and furniture moving/arranging.

So I fit nine out of ten of the criteria for NLD, except that I majored in math … Oh, well, never did like being pigeonholed.

Anyone who wants practical hints on real-world coping skills, please feel free to ask.

NonVerbal Learning Disorder and or NonVerbal Learning Disability—both are used interchangeably. And it is actually a syndrome—which means that there are a group of symptoms and people will have some of the symptoms—not all.

BUT—NLD is not recognized by IDEA as a learning disability nor is it recognized in the DSM IV. There is still disagreement about how to diagnose it, and where you draw the boundaries. The diagnosis is mostly helpful because it gives you a map about what to expect and how to intervene.

Rourke, in 1995 estimated that 1 in 10 LD children were NLD. That would make NLD greatly underdiagnosed. 9 years ago when my child was diagnosed, most medical people and clinicians and most educators had never even heard of NLD. My guess is, that as more people are learning about the disorder, more clinicians and educators are recognizing it and more people are being diagnosed. That’s what happened with dyslexia in the 1970s. Leah

I thought NVLD was living in a verbal world, this person takes in information best through spoken language?

Just to add my own comment on the topic… NLD is considered by many to be part of the autism spectrum. I think the autism spectrum is way too wide and giving a severe label to kids who have some characteristics but not others. Seems to me that years ago most kids were attention deficit disorder and now they are autistic. I don’t like this trend.

>[quote=”JanL”]This may be splitting hairs, but I’ve just noticed my use of the word “disorder” in my nld posts and wondered, woah! where did that come from? It’s a category of learning disabilities, and I don’t like the

I suppose one person’s disability might be another’s disorder. I think the medical community kind of defines anything in the DSM as a disorder. Of course, NLD is not in the DSM to my knowledge either.

>Stewart kind of lumps nld together with Asperger’s as being different but nevertheless overlapping. The expert I’ve just read sees a key difference.

Well the thing about Aspergers/autism is that there are some characteristics that are similar enough to be a syndrome and some things that are quite characteristic about it but not with nld. For example, AS people have a subject that they are passionate, even obsessive about. However, I think 100% of the people with such an interest find it soothing and enjoyable while it might drive others to distraction. (I think the single interest thing is a bit overdone and most adults and many older children have more than one.) Another difference is that AS people tend to have speech and language differences like unusual prosody. I think there are other differences between nld and AS. However that said, I was dxed at Northwestern and they never considered it, although at the time I had zip eye contact. They noted it dutifully and went on, said I lacked self confidence. I have sense joked that it is like the Prime Directive, that if you are in ld land you don’t talk about autism and in autism land you don’t talk about ld. I’m sure the autism folks at U of C don’t give out NLD dxes very much!

>Though Mykleburst and Johnson may have identified nlds in the 80s, I don’t think there’s been a lot of work done in this area since.[/quote]

Well darned if I knew I got the spelling of that one wrong! But the Myklebust/ Johnson book was published in 67! Still, I think your point about not being paid attention to is true. I remember when I first got on the net a number of years ago and there was zero info. Of course the net was young and wild but that’s another story.

—des

Des,
The author of the subtype book I’ve been reading and you are in agreement - the category is way too big. The term syndrome is probably more appropriate as noted in the thread above, and the author of my current book uses that one too- fits when not all individuals fit all the criteria.

Also, I realized after posting that you had said Mykleburst (bust?) was published in the 60s - like I said, I am nld-inattentive type, but my error was partly due to their text being the one I bought for my first special education course following teacher’s college- a text I unfortunately left on a subway in Toronto in 1983 (the inattentive thing again but then I was taking a course and juggline 3 part time jobs at the time) 83 was the year I took the course, so somehow I was thinking 80s when I goofed on that one.

JanL

[quote=”Jillanne”]It seems many children are getting the label of NVLD, is anyone else seeing this trend? Also, not always with the impairments in social language one might think with this disability. The range appears wide to me. Any other observations?[/quote]

Hi,

I am adult with NLD/ADHD so let me chime in. I think is happening is starting to be similar to the situation with ADHD. It is both underdiagnosed and overdiagnosed. It seems the folks who have wrong been tagged with it, only had a higher VIQ than PIQ. But people with Dyslexia and ADHD can have that same profile. You have to look at the underlying factors.

I deviate from the criteria for NLD in many ways and my social skills aren’t anywhere near as bad as Rourke claims they are for most NLDers. As a result, I wondered at one point if my diagnosis was a mistake.

But the key is I don’t read body language intuitively like someone without NLD would. It takes a concerted effort at all times. And of course, I have the visual spatial impairments.

Victoria, I think if you had gone to the person I went to, you essentially would have been told it is hopeless. By the way, many people with NLD, including moi, are good in Math. One person has a PhD in Statistics.

PT

You bring up a good point about the “social skills” that also applies to “visual” & “auditory” learning. If I took an IQ test I”d probably do reasonably okay on those Performance tasks — well, for starters, I know enough about the tests so I’d have just a little advantage, eh? — but because I have found logical and verbal ways to approach those kinds of puzzles. Sometiems the compensating strategies are truly effective; other times they only make you *look* like you’re processing the information.
There are lots of us with good social skills — explicitly and verbally taught to us and practiced, practiced, practiced. I’ve hypothesized that there’s a sense organ for social skills that some people don’t have at all — so we have to get the information from other channels. SOmetimes we don’t even realize other people haven’t had to do it. The converse to it is that just as a Deaf person isn’t always aware of the sounds s/he’s making, and a blind person may have movements they’re not aware other folks can see, the socially senseless cast out social messages they’re clueless about and need to be taught not only to read others’ body language, but to attend to their own unsensed social exudations.

Sue —
“the socially senseless cast out social messages they’re clueless about and need to be taught not only to read others’ body language, but to attend to their own unsensed social exudations.”

How well did you say you know my ex?

My own child was diagnosed with a nonverbal learning disability by a neurologist (lower case). An audiologist we have worked with extensively told me that he has nonverbal learning disabilities but not at the level of a syndrome.

He is also dyslexic and has only been classified on that basis at school.

I think there is a greater recognition of the nonverbal learning disabilities than there used to be. But there are all sorts of configurations of nonverbal learning disabilities and not all are at the severity that the label NLD suggests.

My son doesn’t get jokes he hasn’t heard before but in general he has decent social skills and is well liked. He has had lots of therapy (motor based) and a very good athlete at this point. His favorite class is gym. He still is weak on small motor skills but it doesn’t cause him problems (he forgot how to zip his coat, for example. We don’t zip coats very often in S. Florida but his brother did not forget and he is younger).

Beth

Hmmm…. well, remember, I did grow up in Greenbelt!
That analogy occurred to me when a guy in the bike club said things to me that people didnt’ usually say to me, and I realized he wasn’t sensing the signals that I didn’t know I was sending, because he didn’t have that sense organ either.

Alas, he announced last week he’s moving to St. Paul and getting married…

Sue — I didn’t realize or forgot that you were from Greenbelt! Wondering if we overlapped there — I was there from 1991-93 part-time and 1993-2001 full-time — did we possibly meet?

Probably not — I would have been working in Virginia those years and visiting my parents in Greenbelt now & again. But we probably were within a mile of each other more than once.

[quote=”JanL”]Hi,
I was about to post a question of my own about this disorder (and will separately) when I saw your post.

This is a relatively new disorder, from the point of view of identification and labelling, with less research done on it than in other areas of LD.

A possible explanation of the fact that social problems are not always present is found in a book I just read by a psychologist who specializes in this area. On the basis of clinical experience, she identifies subtypes of this disorder, specifically, Perceptual NLD, Social NLD, Written Expressive NLD, and Attentional NLD. The author states that while NLD subtypes may have features in common, and some children may reflect elements of more than one type, the four differ enough from each other to be designated as different types, requiring separate recommendations.

This to me makes perfect sense as a possible way of getting a handle on this perplexing disorder. For instance, my son has no social problems (beyond a bit of shyness), has good friends, good relationships with peers, good communication and listening skills, understands figurative language etc. I recall other parents on these boards having noted strong athletic skills in their NLD children. I have often felt in visiting the NLD online type boards that I did not belong there simply because the Social NLDs seem to predominate and, in general, the types of problems they share are not ones I can relate to.

There needs to be a lot more research done in this area.

Jan L[/quote][quote]
Jan:

I have the same issue as you. My son was recently diagnosed with a mild form of NLD. He is strong in the social area. He is an outstanding athlete, but his math skills and fine motor skills are not good. We have recently set up an IEP and have started on special math classes for him. I agree that the information the you read on the NLD is geared or focuses mainly on the social aspect.

Hopefully, there will be more research, as for me I am continuing to research more into this on my own.

Robin[/quote]

I look at it this way: there are a bunch of different kinds of Nonverbal Learning. If you have a problem with one of them, then what kind of learning problem is it? It’s a Nonverbal Learning problem. It doesn’t mean the other ones are also problems. It does mean you deal with it differently than the language-based learning problems.