Assessments for NVLD
Capitalizing on Gerstmann’s early work (1940), Johnson and Myklebust (1967) brought thinking about NVLD into the “modern age.” In their book, Learning Disabilities: Educational Principles and Practices they described their version of the syndrome of nonve
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Assessments for NVLD John M. Davis and Jessica Broitman
How Do Psychologists Understand NVLD? Capitalizing on Gerstmann’s early work (1940), Johnson and Myklebust (1967) brought thinking about NVLD into the “modern age.” In their book, Learning Disabilities: Educational Principles and Practices they described their version of the syndrome of nonverbal learning disorders. They observed fine motor difficulties, difficulties with math and writing, and difficulties in visual–spatial processing including something they called “social perception.” They suggested that children with these issues had difficulties in the following areas: understanding gesture, nonverbal motor learning, body image, spatial orientation, right–left orientation, and social perception. Additionally, they also noted that children with NVLD also demonstrated distractibility, perseveration, and disinhibition. Later work has also found overlap with ADHD and executive function issues (Landau, Gross-Tsur, Auerbach, Van der Meer, & Shalev, 1999). The next major advances in research and thinking about NVLD were made by Byron Rourke and his many colleagues. He is the leading proponent of the dominant model and/or definition of NVLD today. After decades of research and two seminal books, Neuropsychology of Learning Disabilities: Essentials of Subtype Analysis (1989) and Syndrome of Nonverbal Learning Disabilities: Neurodevelopmental Manifestations (1995), Rourke has left a significant mark on the field both by trying to establish a diagnostic set of criteria for NVLD and offering a theory for the cause of the disorder.
J.M. Davis, Ph.D. (*) California State University, East Bay, 25800 Carlos Bee Blvd, Hayward, CA 94542-3095, USA e-mail: [email protected] J. Broitman, Ph.D. San Francisco Psychotherapy Research Group, 9 Funston Street, San Francisco, CA 94129, USA e-mail: [email protected] J. Broitman and J.M. Davis (eds.), Treating NVLD in Children: Professional Collaborations for Positive Outcomes, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-6179-1_5, © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013
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J.M. Davis and J. Broitman
Rourke’s diagnostic criteria have remained fairly stable over time. Most recently, Rourke and his colleagues (Pelletier, Ahmad, & Rourke, 2001) have stated that the following criteria have to be met to determine NVLD: 1. Target test at least 1 SD below the mean. 2. No, or very minimal, simple tactile imperception and suppression versus very poor finger agnosia and/or finger dysgraphesthesia. 3. The highest scores on two subtests of the Verbal Scale of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-III (WISC-III): Vocabulary, Similarities, or Information. 4. Two of the subtests from the WISC-III nonverbal subtests of Block Design, Object Assembly, or Coding fall among the lowest scores of the Performance scale. 5. Wide Range Achievement Test—Revised (WRAT-R) standard score for Reading is at least 8 points higher than Arithmetic. 6. Tactual Performance Test, right, left, and both hand times, becomes progressively worse vis-à-vis the norms
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