Asperger's vs. Nonverbal Learning Disabilities

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ManicMinx
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15 Apr 2012, 10:45 am

I just found out that these two conditions can be almost identical. I've been doing some research but I still find it very confusing as to how you can even tell them apart? Some people argue that NVLD is the same thing as Asperger's Syndrome. Does anyone know a good deal about NVLD and can you please elaborate more on the subject? Here's one article: http://www.nldline.com/bonny_forrest_asvsnld.htm



cathylynn
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15 Apr 2012, 10:55 am

sounds like a question for a doc.



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15 Apr 2012, 11:34 am

I didn't know what it was so I just checked out NVLD, aka NLD. It sounds like Asperger's to me. I think there may be people who don't care for the Asperger's/Autism label, so they have come up with another. But hey! If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's a duck. :lol:

Although Asperger's (whether you call it that or NVLD or not), is on the Autism spectrum, it is not Classic Autism. However, many people link them together in their minds, because they are not aware that there is a great spread of functionality on the spectrum. Classic Autism is more low function, whereas Aspies are higher functioning. But even among Aspies there is a range of functionality. This does complicate diagnosis, and how we are perceived by the general public, and even relatives and friends.

Even with the stigma that some seem to attach to spectrum diagnoses, I am still glad that I found out I have Asperger's. I am in my early 50s and spent most of my life dealing with the frustration and stress of not knowing why I was so out of step with the rest of the world. It was a great relief to finally know the answer. :D


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15 Apr 2012, 12:00 pm

Well, for one rather simple thing, Asperger's doesn't require much of an IQ spread between verbal IQ and performance IQ. Certainly some people have that, but not everyone.

questor wrote:
Although Asperger's (whether you call it that or NVLD or not), is on the Autism spectrum, it is not Classic Autism. However, many people link them together in their minds, because they are not aware that there is a great spread of functionality on the spectrum. Classic Autism is more low function, whereas Aspies are higher functioning. But even among Aspies there is a range of functionality. This does complicate diagnosis, and how we are perceived by the general public, and even relatives and friends.


Professionals will state that 90% of people with the Asperger's diagnosis actually meet the criteria for classic autism. The functioning label (even ignoring how inaccurate it is, because autism is associated with uneven abilities varied by person), doesn't even have that simple of a split. There are people with classic autism who are "higher functioning" than people with Asperger's.

Both classic autism and Asperger's have a wide range of functioning, and these are ranges that overlap dramatically.



PaintingDiva
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15 Apr 2012, 12:16 pm

from another thread on are you better at math or literature, or something like that.

1000knives post, he has it and he has discussed it in various posts, was of great interest to me, because i have that split, super good at english/literature super terrible or indifferent to math,

He gives a pretty good explanation:

quote="1000Knives"]For me, it's the same problem, but I'm diagnosed NVLD. NVLD is an IQ split, and usually it's a result of right side of the brain being damaged or irregular. For me, the IQ split is 130 verbal IQ, and about 80 nonverbal IQ, nonverbal IQ encompasses social cues, emotions, but also visual-spatial, and visual spatial affects math. Some people with Aspergers are actually visual thinkers, and visual learners, whereas NVLD is pretty much the opposite extreme. A quick way to check for NVLD without a professional would be, take a verbal IQ test online, and a nonverbal IQ test, like shape sequence or whatever, and see if there's a large gap between them. Mild NVLD is considered about...20 point gap, probably a lot of people got 20 point gaps, really, but extreme cases like mine are the 40-50 point gaps.

As far as NVLD goes, extreme cases manifest as Aspergers basically, as in, you get most of the same problems, but it's not from the same "tree" as Aspergers, if that makes any sense.



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15 Apr 2012, 12:48 pm

The definition for the two things are completely different. There. The only thing they have in common is the people have them, it seems that lots of common traits with NVLD are common with AS. However, they are by no means the same thing, and some people with AS have the opposite of NVLD. IMHO the reason for the similarity is that AS is vague enough that both people who are HFA and other people who have NVLD get diagnosed with it.


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15 Apr 2012, 1:07 pm

Article written for teachers, who have NVLD kids in their classes. Sure sounds like my world when I was in grade school, how this different from HFA, don't know really but for what is worth, here is the article:

Quote:
Seven-year-old Helen is a whiz at anything that has to do with reading, vocabulary, and language. Easily the best reader in the second grade, Helen loves Sustained Silent Reading. Her reading and her vocabulary are at the high fourth-grade level. She likes to participate in class discussions led by the teacher, and is alert and focused on her academics in school.

Her teacher, however, has noticed that Helen has some puzzling areas of weakness. She's struggling quite a bit with math, and her handwriting and copying skills are at the kindergarten level. She dislikes the small motor tasks of cutting, coloring, pasting, sewing, and assembling puzzles. Helen is also having difficulty communicating. On the playground, she will frequently interrupt other children's play or conversation. She is extraordinarily clumsy, often bumping into people and objects.

Who is this child with such an unusual profile? She is an outstanding reader but has difficulty copying from the board. She has an enormous vocabulary but when she speaks, she manages to alienate her classmates. She has difficulty with small motor tasks but she loves board games. But she couldn't possibly have a learning disability, could she? Doesn't having a learning disability indicate that a child has difficulty with reading??

Nonverbal Learning Disabilities

By definition, students with learning disabilities have neurological deficits that keep them from grasping certain content areas at grade level. Students with a type of disability commonly known as a nonverbal learning disability? (NVLD, or sometimes NLD) have a unique set of academic strengths and weaknesses.

Unlike most other students identified as learning disabled, these students can start their academic career on a gifted track. They are wonderful readers, can articulate their thoughts clearly, and can memorize, categorize, and recall numerous facts. Educators have become aware that students with NVLD differ greatly from others identified with learning disabilities, especially students with dyslexia.

The Elementary Years

As early as kindergarten, students with NVLD are seen as little professors,? able to read, memorize, and articulate their thoughts very proficiently. These attributes make their particular type of learning disability frequently misunderstood by the professional community.

This is in marked contrast with the dyslexic student, whose reading difficulties are readily perceived. Students with dyslexia are typically noticed in the first grade, and diagnosed with learning disabilities by the second grade; thus, they are able to get remedial help early on in their academic careers.

The child with the more elusive NVLD has right-hemisphere neurological deficits that manifest themselves in four major areas:

1. Gross motor development. Girls and boys with NVLD are slow learning to walk, ride a bicycle, and play ball. When they walk they typically seem a bit off balance, and, like Helen, they have a tendency to bump into objects and people.

2. Visual-motor deficits. Due to right-brain neurological weaknesses, students with NVLD have trouble processing and remembering visual images, causing them difficulty remembering the shapes of numbers, letters, and geometric forms. Their fine-motor deficits include difficulties eating with utensils, tying shoelaces, drawing, cutting, pasting, writing, and copying from the chalkboard. Writing tasks are arduous, as these children have problems learning how to form the shapes of numbers and letters.

Students with NVLD are able to pay attention when the teacher lectures, but they have trouble seeing and processing visual-spatial cues from graphs, maps, and charts.

3. Communication, nonverbal communication patterns, and maintaining friendships. Communication experts believe that 65-70 percent of all information is conveyed nonverbally. Due to neurological deficits in the right hemisphere, students with NVLD often misread social cues. They are not sure when to talk or when to wait during a conversation. They may stand too close to others or speak too loudly.

Students with NVLD also tend to be "concrete?" and literal-they see the trees, not the forest. Helen does not understand abstract sayings such as strike while the iron is hot.? She tends to take everything she hears or reads literally. In first grade, Helen's teacher saw her kick her classmate Sally and told her to stop. Helen stopped kicking Sally, but then kicked Bobby. Helen was surprised that her teacher got angry. I did what you wanted. I stopped kicking Sally!? In essence, students with NVLD have trouble getting the deeper meaning of conversations and in literature.

4. Serious emotional problems. When parents, teachers, and specialists misunderstand the deficits associated with NVLD, it can lead to depression, anxiety, and phobias. Adults place a lot of pressure on their little professors? to perform. Students with NVLD want to please others, and become anxious when they cannot do what is expected of them. They have no idea why they often annoy others. Adults may see their behavior as a deliberate plan to gain attention, without understanding that these children's right-brain deficits prevent them from comprehending social expectations.

Many parents and teachers honestly believe that someone like Helen is deliberately misbehaving; children with NVLD are often reprimanded for behavior over which they have no control. This can lead to feelings of inadequacy which can further develop into depression and/or a phobia; an unusually large number of students with NVLD become suicidal in their high school years. To compound matters, the students are confused and hurt by the social rejection they experience from their peers.

Some students with NVLD are seen as openly defiant, and are placed in classrooms for children with emotional and behavioral disorders. But NVLD is not the same as an emotional disorder-behavior management therapies are not the remedial services these students need.

The Middle-School Years

Middle-school students with NVLD have the same disadvantages as children starting school, but they manifest themselves in some new ways:

1. Problems with reading comprehension. In the middle-school years, students need to begin comprehending the deeper meanings, abstractions, and implications of literature; they can no longer survive by rote memorization and focusing on the details. The reading ability of NVLD students decreases as they get older.

2. Physical navigation. Without adequate visual-spatial motor skills, middle-school students have trouble physically navigating their way around large buildings including schools, large department stores, and malls. Some middle-school students report that instead of concentrating during the class they have before lunch, they are worrying about how to walk from the classroom, to their locker, and to the cafeteria in time!

3. Social problems. Middle-school students with NVLD have difficulties with visual-spatial motor skills, resulting in problems understanding graphs, maps, geometry, and how to make mobiles; with reading, science, history, and more; and with seeing? how their inappropriate behavior can lead to misunderstandings. Perhaps it is the misunderstanding of these deficits, the frustration felt when adults' expectations are too high, and the rejection by peers that lead to anxiety and depression. NVLD students make very literal translations in social situations. They are too trusting, do not grasp the social implications of body language, and cannot navigate the social scene.

Intervention Strategies

If teachers are aware of the signs of NVLD, they can intervene earlier to help children who are affected. Even if a child has reached middle school without prior diagnosis or intervention, a teacher's support in getting immediate help can be invaluable.

Teachers can teach to the child's strengths (see NVLD Teaching Strategies) and advocate to get each child appropriate help. Students identified with dyslexia, for example, will likely need extra help learning to read. In many school systems they will be pulled out? of the regular classroom during reading time. They will typically learn to read using a multi-sensory reading program such as Project Read, Wilson, Orton Gillingham, LIPS, or Reading Recovery under the guidance of a learning disability specialist or a reading specialist.

Students like Helen, who are diagnosed with NVLD, are likely to need help from the following specialists: (1) the special education teacher for help with modifications in writing assignments, organization strategies, and reading comprehension (grades 5-12); (2) the speech-and-language therapist to work on pragmatics such as tone of voice, how to request help from a teacher, how to make small talk with students, story scripting, and other conversational skills; (3) the occupational therapist to master visual-motor and spatial skills. It is best for these interventions to occur in the lower elementary levels in order to prevent the anxiety and alienation from others that build up steadily as the child grows.

Teachers can play a key role in the success of students with NVLD in both the academic and the social-emotional realms. By understanding and being accepting of each child, and his or her individual differences, teachers can inspire students with NVLD to believe in themselves.



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15 Apr 2012, 1:13 pm

From what I have read research is ongoing and there is somewhat of a debate on this issue:

Aspersers was described by psychologists; thus, entering the DSM (which is used for coding disorders for insurance purposes often).

In contrast, Non – Verbal Learning Disabilities was described by Nauralogists
>NVLD may be entered in the next edition of the DSM

Also, remember that behaviors are a on spectrum or a range of behavior sets
>IE Women vs men may even express these differences between them evem within AS
> Not everyone with AS will express all AS "classic" symptoms
>Not all AS have NVLD

My personal view is that two different disciplines were describing similar aspects of the same disorder. I have seen papers on both sides of the argument and it appears to be splitting hairs to some degree.



Last edited by Briarsprout on 15 Apr 2012, 1:45 pm, edited 3 times in total.

Briarsprout
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15 Apr 2012, 1:19 pm

Also, here is a good discussion chains on the same topic from this forum.

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt84443.html

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt49618.html



TheRedPedant93
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24 Apr 2012, 4:06 pm

Nonverbal Learning disabilities are of minor recognition in accordance with British neuropsychological research (I reside in the UK) which I find rather disparaging.

As an avid researcher of AS & High Functioning Autism I find the comparison regarding Asperger Syndrome and Nonverbal learning Disability (NLD) most provocative and intriguing, whilst not taking into account that they are fundamentally distinctive. Consciously I do perceive that there is incremental correspondence of the shared traits between AS & NLD, as well of a presence of developmental abnormalities of the right cerebral hemisphere which initiates these clinical aspects. Both syndromes are dually diagnosed at an accumulated rate by neuropsychologists and neurologists, hence the speculation of the equivalence.

On the other hand restricted or obsessive interests as well as the inclusion of an intensified preoccupation of a specialized interest are not defined as an aspect of NLD & likewise the presence of sensory impairments such as hypersensitivity to sound & smell are relatively less predominant. Individuals with AS tend to exhibit visual learning and thinking abilities, whereas those with NLD are deficient with this form of learning concept. Some visual learners are more proficient & therefore remarkable than others such as Temple Grandin (High Functioning Autistic).

The neuropsychological profile of NLD which is consistent with demonstrating a substantial discrepancy between a higher VIQ over a lower PIQ are not necessarily of presence in Asperger Syndrome. A reversed intellectual profile consisting of a higher PIQ over VIQ is a common aspect for those labelled with "High Functioning Autism" but according to a conducted study termed "Do individuals with high functioning autism have the IQ profile associated with nonverbal learning disability?"- Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders: 353–361. (9th June 2008) there is consensus that individuals with HFA can possess the neuropsychological profile of NLD occassionally compared to AS, regardless of significant hindrance in language acquisition.

What I have elaborated on consequently proves that Asperger Syndrome & Non Verbal Learning Disorder are distinctive & not necessarily of co occurrence, nor mutually exclusive. I hope what I have elaborated on is precisional enough for you to comprehend that both are not inseparable. :)

Diagnosed with "Classical" Asperger's syndrome in 1998
AQ: 47/50



kringaz
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18 Oct 2012, 3:36 am

I just wanted to say, I have NVLD and my from my personal wanderings around the web researching autism and its spectrum disorders, I personally think it's different from Asperger's, but shares many strong similarities. I think it's separate. I also admit that I'm reluctant to accept its part of the autism spectrum due to me being afraid of criticism. Oh well; even if it is part of the autism spectrum or not, I'm comfortable with myself. Now if only I could get back to that short story I'm supposed to be working on for Creative Writing 1100..



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18 Oct 2012, 12:48 pm

NVLD is a learning disability. Asperger Syndrome is a pervasive developmental disorder. I would think that right there would indicate some sort of difference.


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18 Oct 2012, 2:40 pm

There's nothing in common between NLD and AS, except the fact that both are socially rejected and (only partly) due to the same traits. The social aspect is so crucial for both that they seem to have a lot in common, when actually many of the traits are actually the very opposite. Examples:

1. Visio-spatial impairment - it's always present in NLD, only present in some AS cases if at all. NLD is the uber-linguistic type and very bad at Engineering skills, while AS is called the Engineers' syndrom. NLD = getting lost, very impaired at sports, big difficulties driving.

2. Social behavior - AS can be inappropriately inexpressive and introverted, while the vast majority of NLDers are inappropriately overly-expressive and extroverted.

3 . Desire for social interaction - NLDers need it and seek it intensely, AS often distance from it or are indifferent.

4. Linguistic abilities above the (NT) norm - typical of NLD, atypical in AS. I have 3 languages at mother tongue level, and another 5 I manage in. I'm a Linguist and some say you can't tell I'm not an English native speaker.

In my personal opinion, both are forms of autism, because my grandmother and father had high-functioning autism, my father in the form of AS, and I inherited it in the form of NLD. Sadly, until the researchers catch up with what we already know, we NLDers will continue being diagnosed with AS (because there's no Social Security benefits for NLD).

I have problems with looking in the eye, face-blindness, social subtext and some mild sensory issues, but I'm very, very good at executive functioning and understanding sarcasm, metaphor, tone of voice and body language.

Externally I look completely NT and it takes many, many hours of interaction with me to start sensing something is "different".

Unlike autism, NLD is believed to be the result of brain damage at birth. There's less mystery around it. And the social aspect does not improve in adulthood, as opposed to AS. In fact, it gets a lot worse and therefore there's a high incidence of suicide among NLDers around the age of 50.


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18 Oct 2012, 3:01 pm

Why doesn't the social impairment improve with age with NVLD? Is it because there is less room for improvement, having started at a higher level at birth, but being limited by the NVLD impairments?



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18 Oct 2012, 3:28 pm

The social aspect becomes worse and worse with time - in stages. These stages correspond with the stages of NT social development. NTs don't develop socially in a gradual way but in stages. At each of these stages, they leave the NLDer more and more behind in social behavior. At around 50, the gap becomes impossible to wade in any way anymore. Hence the suicide statistics at this age. I have rescue cats that would die without me because of the horrible situation of cats in my country, otherwise I'd be one of the statistics no doubt.

The gap I'm talking about is caused by the subtext. Subtext is an NLDer's nightmare, and the older an NT is, the more they engage in subtext. Eg you can see that an 8-y/o child will vocalize: "I don't want to be your friend anymore if you don't come with me to the party!" The older an NT is, the less they say directly and the more they use subtext to express themselves, making interaction impossible for an NLDer.

I assume aspies don't really have a problem with subtext, because I've started numerous threads about it and invariably got 2-3 totally clueless replies in total, aspies had no idea what I was talking about.

Subtext is teaching you how to behave with them in silent ways, eg if you don't come with me to the party, I start calling you less often. Then you have to figure out for yourself why I'm upset, and keep silent about it. Then next time you come with me to the party, as a way of telling me that you want me to start calling you often again. It's not "non-verbal" as in body language, it's "non-verbal" as in situationally hinted.


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18 Oct 2012, 4:22 pm

emimeni wrote:
NVLD is a learning disability. Asperger Syndrome is a pervasive developmental disorder. I would think that right there would indicate some sort of difference.


Yes, there are differences.
I clearly don't have NVLD and never identified with those difficulties. I more fit into pragmatic language disorder, what's a bit the opposite to some degree.


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