NEURODEVELOPMENTAL PRECURSORS TO LEARNING-DISABILITIES - A PRELIMINARY-REPORT FROM A PARENT SURVEY

This study documented the number and type of neurodevelopmental proble ms reported by parents of children with and without learning disabilit ies (LD), and examined whether a pattern of problems could be identifi ed. One hundred parents, 50 for each group, responded to a retrospecti ve developmental survey. Their children were between 9 and 13 years of age and had a history of either typical academic achievement or class ification of a learning disability. Results indicated that the childre n with learning disabilities were reported to have significantly more neurodevelopmental problems or delays across domains (e.g., language, motor, attention, social behavior) than normal achievers. The study sh owed that a sizeable portion, although not all, of the children with L D had a history of neurodevelopmental problems. Despite findings that suggest that some difficulties more commonly to-occurred than others, a pattern of neurodevelopmental difficulties was not observed in these children. However, some specific difficulties, such as with following multistep directions, printing fetters of the alphabet, and understan ding directions (e.g., up, down, right, left), seemed to most typify t he students with learning disabilities.