Nonverbal learning disorder

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I find it hard to believe you are referring to your full scale IQ at 50? Do you mean WMI, which would be lowest in NVLD?

The WISC is broken down like this:

Each of the ten core subtests is given equal weighting towards full-scale IQ. There are three subtests for both VCI and PRI, thus they are given 30% weighting each; in addition, PSI and WMI are given 20% weighting for their two subtests each.

The VCI's subtests are as follows:

Vocabulary - straightforward questions over the meaning of words
Similarities - asking how two concepts are alike
Comprehension - questions about social situations or common concepts
Information (supplemental) - general knowledge questions
Word Reasoning (supplemental) - children are presented with one to three riddle-style clues and asked to determine what the tester is describing.

The PRI's subtests are as follows:

Block Design - children put together red-and-white blocks in a pattern according to a displayed model. This is timed, and some of the more difficult puzzles award bonuses for speed.
Picture Concepts - children are shown rows of pictures, and are asked to find a common bond with one picture in each row.
Matrix Reasoning - children are shown an array of pictures with one missing square, and select the picture that fits the array from five options.
Picture Completion (supplemental) - children are shown artwork of common objects with a missing part, and asked to identify the missing part by pointing and/or naming.

The WMI's subtests are as follows:

Digit Span - children are orally given sequences of numbers and asked to repeat them, either as heard or in reverse order.
Letter-Number Sequencing - children are orally given sequences of letters and numbers together, and asked to repeat them in both numerical order and alphabetical order.
Arithmetic (supplemental) - orally administered arithmetic questions. Timed.

The PSI's subtests are as follows:

Coding - children under 8 mark rows of shapes with different lines according to a code, children over 8 transcribe a digit-symbol code. Time-limited with bonuses for speed.
Symbol Search - children are given rows of symbols and target symbols, and asked to mark whether or not the target symbols appear in each row.
Cancellation (supplemental) - students are to mark lines through objects that do not belong in a page of randomly-arranged objects and one of orthogonally-arranged objects.

People with AS with have a higher VCI than PRI, but the WMI won't be lower than the PRI. In NVLD, the WMI will be lower than both the VCI and the PRI. And NVLD will have a higher score on reading interpretation for social meaning. You get 1 point for factual interpretation and 2 points for factual and social interpretation. The PSI is given only to very young children.

This is meant in general terms only. There are always exceptions.

no. this is what i mean by global functioning

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Ass ... unctioning

That doesn't say anything about what type of LDs you may have or anything about your IQ. The WISC measures strengths and weaknesses and is a diagnostic tool. It is not so much the number, but where the strengths and weaknesses lie, that determines a diagnosis. You could have a very high verbal IQ and a very low GAF score. Just being depressed would lower your GAF.

i havent done wisc since ive been in school. my iq is 86.

The most important measure is your verbal IQ. It is also interesting to note that anyone who has big differences in their IQ subsets feels more like an unintelligent person than someone who has a uniformly lower IQ. I would bet your verbal IQ is much higher than 86.

my overall iq is 86. my verbal iq is alot higher, i dont know what it its at the moment, i'll have to dig up my evals. i know alot of factual info and that is why i was diagnosed with aspergers

Yep. So is mine, my son's and my daughter's. The verbal IQ is what other people see and that is the important thing to remember. You don't need block design in real life as you interact with people verbally. It is because you are intelligent, you feel unintelligent. People who are uniformly dull all across the board don't think they are.

great points, but i cannot talk to people without being under the influence

Maybe I was not. I am looking over the reports I just got, and they don't actually say NLD or NVLD.

They list a lot of LD's, and neurological problems I have / had. My mother was also strongly warned in one report that I may present with an eating disorder at a later age. She also told me that he verbally told her that I would have "social problems" and not relate well to others.

My son was flagged at 7 with having a "possible" NLD. This would have been in 2000. My mother identifed with it right away and said, "yes, that is what they said about you". But perhaps they did not use "NLD" as a label at that time.

In Canada, they have been using NLD for years, maybe not back when I was a child, but they did note that some kids with LD's commonly had social issues, difficulty relating and interacting with others. That is what my mother was told I had I suppose.

The thing with psychologists though, is they tend to get camped together in cult like groups with a set doctrine or ideology. They will defend "there version" of the "human psychy" to the bitter end. That said, they are kind of like a religion, in that there are many different interpretations. Ultimately, the DSM is becoming the "bible" though, which is used by all the "denominations".

One day when I am bored, I'll write out all the things I was "dx'ed" with.

Well, you can't have both AS and NLD because AS encompasses NLD and adds a dash of special interests into the mix. Maybe you have NLD and NOT AS?

You have to look at objective data like subset test scores.

this was the area of my highest average IQ scores.... with the bold one being that tanagram-like tasks they had me do.

i was working with block grids 8x8 and 10x10 and did them all better (meaning i completed more of them) and faster than anyone they had had before.

so if this section was by far one of my strengths, what does that mean? doesn't this kind of testing relate to your performance skills?

looking back at a lot of my other standardized testing that i've had... i would say that my verbal is significantly higher than performance... my SAT/GRE scores are barely average... yet my writing scores through the roof. i got a 5.5 out of 6 for writing the very first time i took my GREs...

i have trouble reading maps (i know i get lost A LOT)... but not really with charts and such... but that could be just cause im used to them???? (science loves charts for some reason)

i'm auditory for learning factoids and things (but i connect it visually with drawing)... but if i'm to perform a task... i need to see someone do it (though i used to suck at this as well, i think martial arts and learning physical postioning/transitioning really helped there)... i think i have trouble with that executive thing cause people who know me and are trying to tell me verbally how to do something... they can see in my eyes the second i blip out and go to lala land.

and also... didn't see whether this got answered or not... but does NLD include eye contact issues? stimming? or is the special interest the only specific AS trait?

if one is nested into the other.... i don't see why you can't have both?

ill use an evolutionary analogy (As that's what i study)

so a lot of evolution occurs due to genome duplication events (genome =set of DNA)

a good example is that fish have had 4 genome duplications, whereas a lot of other vertebrates have only had 2 genome duplications

fish genome:
XXXOOXOXO
XXXOOXOXO
XXXOOXOXO
XXXOOXOXO

vertebrate genome:
XXXOOXOXO
XXXOOXOXO

so while both organisms have the same sets of genes (each gene denoted with Xs and Os)... once a copy of the genome has been made... each copy can then evolve (mutate) so that the genes can aquire or lose function(mutations either allow for new function or jack your gene up so much that it loses function)... (as long as the org has one copy of any of the genes, it can keep functioning normally within the organism, letting the other equivalent gene copies to mutate freely since they're not under any evolutionary requirements, basically...

this leaves you with their genomes looking like this (possibly)

fish
XXXOOXOXO (the intact copy)
XX-OOXOX-
-XXO-XOXO
XXXOO--XO

vert
XXXOOXOXO (the intact copy)
XXX-O--XO

so the point here is... that there are a lot of gene duplication events... and all the rounds of duplication are subject to evolution INDEPENDANTLY to all of their relevant copies... and what are the odds that all the exact copies would evolve exactly the same? hence the variation in all the "copies"...


so maybe autism/AS/NLD kinda evolved like this.... where ALL of them are derived from a certain set of genes, that just went through a duplication event and the specific variances (due to independent evolution) gave rise to all these different types of (similar) LDs... cause they all started out with the same building blocks (ie-same set of genes for each section of duplicated genome)

this is how i'm thinking of it... and is why i think you could have both As and NLD.... (meaning why you can have the conflicting traits... as they can both come from different copies, if that makes sense)

I am having trouble following! Are you talking to me?

EDIT... *Text Removal*

I don't think you where talking to me! I think my reading disabilities where playing tricks on me again!

Last edited by EarthCalling on 18 Apr 2007, 10:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Thanks everyone for their answers, they certainly have already brought some enlightenment!
The thing is, I share really lots of the traits of Asperger's, I also score in the AS range in all those tests (like AQ test, Aspie Quiz etc.), but I don't have any extremely obsessive repetitive interests and behaviours or rituals which I insist on.

Looking at the DSM one could say then that I have social difficulties only and that it might be Social Phobia or something, but that's not exactly it. I mean, I might have that, too, but I definitely also lack social ability. Not in the way that I don't get body language, at least the basic one (smile, nod, frown...) I do get, though I have severe doubts that I get the subtle one as good as other people (but how should I really know?). I just get that idea from the fact that I do not seem to get the bigger social concepts, for example how to make friends. I was told that I had to smile more when interacting with people (not that I was all that serious, quite the contrary, but I smiled when I found something funny and such, not just out of politeness so to say) and that one had to follow the peer pressure in order to fit in. That never came naturally to me, and it's not (at least not when I was little) that out of personall convictions or so I purposefully refused to follow peer pressure, I just didn't even know that there was such a thing. I mean, I remember even in kindergarden kids saying to me "but if you don't do that and that you are not going to be in our gang!" and me just going quite surprised "so what?" I wouldn't have minded playing with them at all, just why I should be interested in any way to be in a gang I didn't understand. I did want and did have friends though (well, only two, but those were good ones) when I was little, but those friendships were arranged for me by our parents and teachers, plus the real difficulty only began in highschool, when friendship or even just simple social interaction meant nearly nothing but (mostly meaningless) talking, all the time. As children one would mostly play together which was fun but now it was only about small talk and gossip, I couldn't relate to that at all. Then such things as when lots of people meet for the first time and nobody knows nobody and then after only a week or so everybody has already formed those tight little pairs or cliques, this is all going much too fast for me, how do they know so quickly who fits them and who not?

So things like that make me sure it's not only social anxiety. But what is it then?

Ok, now I've already written so much, that I can also write some more about in how far I think I might fit the NLD criteria and for any feedback I would be glad (as I don't know how severe one's problems would have to be really), though I would understand if by now you are bored and stopped

For example motor difficulties. What does that mean? Do I really have to bump into everything and be a total klutz or is being somewhat behind in fine motor skills, being still very bad at gross motor skills (can't skip for example or follow dance steps, am bad at catching and throwing a ball and so on, just everything which makes you suck at p.e.) and "looking funny" (whatever that means) when walking and running enough?

Visual-spatial difficulties then. I have a terrible sense of direction, bad visual recall (I guess) as I also can't remember new ways and surroundings well and always get that feeling that people recall much more from for example past holidays. I'm also able to recall the events there, but if you asked me to describe the look of a room or even a sight (which after all I'm trying hard to keep in my mind) I couldn't do that at all.
Apart from that I can't judge distances and heights well, can't get much use out of diagrams, maps etc., sucked at geometry even more than at algebra because I just couldn't imagine it, definitely think in words rather than in pictures, am good at and enjoy learning things by heart (which other people often find boring) such as vocabularies or poems and as I constantly talk to myself while learning and other noises distract me a lot when I want to really concentrate I'd say I'm an auditory learner, too. I was always good with reading, spelling, writing, learning foreign languages, just anything having to do with words, but was equally bad at math and physics (people, including teachers, always comment on what an unusual gap between academic abilities I have).

I'm overly-sensitive when it comes to noises, a barking dog or passing motorbike will always let me startle really hard and inside a disco I can't stand it for more than maybe five minutes, just like that with vaccum cleaner and mixer and such really annoyingly loud things, well, I can endure them, but I hate them and if it's possible to avoid them I for sure will (though somehow it doesn't bother me far as much when I vacuum clean myself for example, don't know why that is).

Also I've always been overly anxious about any new situations, even things peers wouldn't even waste a thought about. I might overcome my fear sometimes, but only when I really really wanted to (nobody else could convince or pressure me into it) and was given loads of time.
That's pretty much the only area where I was stubborn though, otherwise my parents describe me as an easy child to handle, quiet, obedient, good. This doesn't seem to fit at all with that NLD children are supposed to be hyperactive when little, are all of them? I doubt though that I was all that easy because I was overly shy and prone to worry and cry over minor things because of being teased and taking it literally or criticism or being much too quickly frustrated when I tried something and it didn't work. And then there was this lack of trying to achieve independence skills, this whole "I can do that alone!" thing which little children have. Of course I'm trying to achieve those now, but not as much as others do, and also it came only really in adolescence, and new situations still make me just as anxious always.

Could that be NLD or am I totally barking up at the wrong tree here? (Getting a professional advice would be preferable of course, but quite impossible as NLD isn't diagnosed here as far as I know)

you have nvld nothing wrong with that!! i wish i had it instead of aspergers

I think it sounds like NLD too!

The social phobia can be a part of NLD I would think. Years of poor social skills can make one fearful of social situations they are not familiar with. Basically, if it hurts, you don't want to do it.

I "get" the smiling thing. It can be practiced and learned, I did it to some extent. At 14/15 I was "the girl who never smiled around town". So, I turned that around to the grinning village idiot! Well maybe not exactly, but I trained myself to smile at everything, it creeped some people out, but others seemed to prefer me that way!

It sounds like you are definately "slow" with socializing, that said, I bet that you will find that as time goes by, you will form a handful of very close and tight relationships with others. It is just you don't "do" the superficial "fluff", very similar to many people with AS, but also very common with NLD.



It sounds like you may suffer from mild "dyspraxia" (poor gross and fine motor skills) or at the very least, "dysgraphia" (poor fine motor skills). These are a separate condition from AS or NLD, although they are often co morbid in both! (meaning you can have AS or NLD AND have one or both of these conditions). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyspraxia (or google Dyspraxia) This site also seems to have lots of info: http://www.dyspraxiafoundation.org.uk/


Really sounds like some sort of visual / perceptual impairment. Not sure if that goes with Dyspraxia? ... I just read that NLD can be responsible for this too....


Look up "dyscalcula".

It sounds like a sensory integration disorder. A LOT of autistics have it, (one of the Number 1 problems with Aspie Children leading to meltdowns). However it is its own problem outright, and a "co morbid" of ASD's, not a symptom. It is possible to have A SI issue and NOT have an ASD, you could have it with an NLD too.

Again, if you are going into a new area, with lots of people, with poor perceptual (vision) and spatial (vision) and sensory issues (all senses) and poor social skills, and you don't know what to expect, why WOULD YOU BE OK WITH THAT?

[/quote] I believe NLD is Dx'ed through psychology? I know in Canada that it is... Sounds like you need a psychologist, not a medical doctor.

Best of luck, it is frustrating knowing something is not right with you, and not knowing what that is, or how to work around it. By better understanding ourselves, it helps us figure out who we are and how to cope!