Other LD

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Related conditions

"Many aspects of speaking, listening, reading, writing, and arithmetic overlap and build on the same brain capabilities. It is not surprising that people can be diagnosed with more than one learning disability. For example, the ability to understand language underlies learning to speak. Therefore, any disorder that hinders the ability to understand language will also interfere with the development of speech, which in turn hinders learning to read and write."
Readingrockets.org
 

Specific Language Impairment (SLI)
Specific Language Impairment appears to be a developmemtal language disorder that manifests itself in specific language issue from a very early age, but often results in dyslexia. Many in the field believe it to be an umbrella-like term that includes a wide degree of language impairment.

According to Dorothy V. M. Bishop, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, in an article reprinted from Current Directions in Psychological Science (October 2006, Volume 15, Number 5).by the Canadian Language & Literacy Research Network, "Children with specific language impairment (SLI) have major problems in learning to talk, despite showing normal development in all other areas. Thus, a typical 7- or 8-year-old child with SLI may talk like a 3-year-old, using simplified speech sounds, with words strung together in short, ungrammatical strings—e.g., "me go there," rather than "I went there." SLI is a heterogeneous category, varying in both severity and profile of disorder, but in most cases it is possible to demonstrate problems with both understanding and producing spoken language; for example, the child may have difficulty using toys to act out a sentence such as "the boy is chased by the dog," showing confusion as to who is doing what to whom. Language impairment in SLI is puzzling precisely because it occurs in children who are otherwise normally developing, with no hearing problems or physical handicaps that could explain the difficulties." Bishop's full article titled What Causes Specific Language Impairment in Children?, can be found here.

According to the Reading Rockets website, in their article Specific Language Impairment by Louise Spear-Swerling (July 2006), "Specific language impairment puts children at clear risk for later academic difficulties, in particular, for reading disabilities. Studies have indicated that as many as 40-75% of children with SLI will have problems in learning to read, presumably because reading depends upon a wide variety of underlying language skills, including all of the component language abilities mentioned above (grammar and syntax, semantics, and phonological skills). Moreover, children with continuing language problems at school entrance are not the only ones at risk; kindergartners with previous SLI who appear to have "caught up" to their age peers in language abilities still are at increased risk of reading difficulties, relative to children with no history of SLI. However, the preschoolers at greatest risk of future reading problems are those whose language difficulties are persistent over time, affect multiple components of language, or are severe, even if only in a single component of language."

The University of Kansas has a webpage entitled the Top 10 things you should know about children with Specific Language Impairment. Find it here.
 

Nonverbal Learning Disorder
The Reading Rockets website defines nonverbal learning disability as a "neurological disorder which originates in the right hemisphere of the brain. Reception of nonverbal or performance-based information governed by this hemisphere is impaired in varying degrees, causing problems with visual-spatial, intuitive, organizational, evaluative, and holistic processing functions."

The Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) offers a comprehensive downloadable Nonverbal Learning Disorder Informational Paper off of their website.