Neuropsychological abilities and academic gains in learning disabled children - A follow-up study over an academic school year

We evaluated 22 learning disabled students with documented learning disabil ities on standardized academic achievement tests at the beginning and end o f one academic school year. In addition, at the beginning of the school yea r, neuropsychological measures were also administered and readministered at 1.5 year follow-up to a subset of these children (N = 16). As a group, sub jects demonstrated impairment on neuropsychological measures and these meas ures were stable over the follow-up period. Subjects improved from the begi nning of the school year to the end of the school year in the academic area of written language. Specific patterns of neuropsychological ability corre lated with academic improvement in specific areas. Our preliminary results suggest that neuropsychological testing may be useful in predicting academi c improvement and ultimately in designing educational strategies for learni ng disabled children.