NLD is Non-verbal Learning Disability. It is a disorder in which people have significant problems with nonverbal communication, motor skills, and visual spatial skills.
There is a lot of overlap between Asperger's and NLD- enough that some people have considered them to be manifestations of the same thing. When I read about NLD, the descriptions are so similar to AS that I sometimes forget I am reading about NLD and not AS. In fact,although NLD is associated with other disorders like ADHD, the symptoms of NLD still resemble AS more than any other condition.
Majority of people with aspergers have a verbal IQ several points higher than their performance(nonverbal) IQ. A common presentation of Asperger's is a young child with advanced vocabulary for his age, yet with poor non-verbal communication skills. I have also read that motor skills and awkward gait are slightly worse in Asperger's than in HFA. This pattern is similar to NLD.
People with HFA on the other hand, tend to have delayed verbal skills as a young child (speech delay)- which sometimes affect how they interpret language their entire lives. Temple Grandin claims she finds that language feels unnatural to her and that she thinks in pictures. This would seem to make for a higher non-verbal IQ vs verbal IQ? A lot of people with high functioning autism have significant verbal communication problems , unlike people with Asperger's.
27 Mar 2015, 9:49 pm
