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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday April 29 2020, @03:58PM   Printer-friendly

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Nonverbal learning disability (NVLD), a poorly understood and often-overlooked disorder that causes problems with visual-spatial processing, may affect nearly 3 million children in the United States, making it one of the most common learning disorders, according to a new study by led by Columbia University Irving Medical Center.

The study, the first to estimate the prevalence of NVLD in the general population, was published online today in JAMA Network Open.

"NVLD is a huge and hidden public health burden," said Jeffrey Lieberman, Chair of Psychiatry at the Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and Director of the New York State Psychiatric Institute. "This important work might never have come to light if not for the support of dedicated advocate and their philanthropic support. We hope that these findings raise awareness of the disorder and lead to an understanding of its neurobiology and better treatments."

The name of this neurodevelopmental disorder may be part of the problem: children with NVLD are not nonverbal, as the name suggests, and have no difficulty reading. Instead, children with NVLD have difficulty processing visual-spatial sensory information, which can cause problems with math, executive function, and fine motor and social skills. "Children with this disorder might shy away from doing jigsaw puzzles or playing with Legos," says lead author Amy E. Margolis, PhD, assistant professor of medical psychology at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. "They may have trouble tying their shoes, using scissors, or learning routes or schedules."

NVLD was first described in 1967, but compared with other learning disorders it has received little attention. There's little consensus among physicians on how to diagnose the disorder, and it is not included in the current edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). The cause of NVLD is not known and there are no treatments.

Few parents have heard of NVLD. "Most parents recognize that a child who isn't talking by age two should be evaluated for a learning disorder. But no one thinks twice about kids who have problems with visual-spatial tasks," says Margolis.

[...] Margolis advises parents to seek evaluation for children with symptoms of NVLD. "Diagnosis can be accomplished using basic assessment tools," says Margolis. "It doesn't have to involve complex and costly neuropsychological testing. We envision that all clinicians who use DSM5 will be able to use our new criteria to determine who may meet criteria. They can then send patients for basic psychological testing that is always available through schools to identify/quantify a problem with visual-spatial processing."

-- submitted from IRC

Journal Reference:
Amy E. Margolis, Jessica Broitman, John M. Davis, Lindsay Alexander, Ava Hamilton, Zhijie Liao, Sarah Banker, Lauren Thomas, Bruce Ramphal, Giovanni A. Salum, Kathleen Merikangas, Jeff Goldsmith, Tomas Paus, Katherine Keyes, Michael P. Milham. Estimated Prevalence of Nonverbal Learning Disability Among North American Children and Adolescents. JAMA Network Open, 2020; 3 (4): e202551 DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.2551


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by martyb on Wednesday April 29 2020, @05:31PM (6 children)

    by martyb (76) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday April 29 2020, @05:31PM (#988255) Journal

    My guess is this will end up being a spectrum disease.

    I think you nailed it. I've seen the same things over the years. There are some folk who just can't "see it".

    As for "spectrum", there are two sides to that. Well, actually a whole bell curve (or some other statistical distribution)!

    Growing up, my Dad would frequently sketch something he was looking to make. At first, it was just so many lines on a page. Then we'd head off to his workshop and he'd explain what he was doing. Over time, I saw countless examples of seeing his drawings converted into reality... it eventually "clicked" for me. Let's just say that the standardized tests of "which one of these, when folded up, would match this cube?" was a trivial challenge for me. In fact, my visualization skills were an obstacle when I was first studying Geometry. "Given a triangle, where line segments AB and AC are of the same length, show that angle ABC is equiangular to angle ACB." I'd pause for a moment, draw the triangle in my mind, picture what would happen if I changed the length of either AB or AC (or both) or changed the angle BAC. Yep, that's right! Cool!" For some reason the teacher wanted me to prove it, and I'm just thinking "It has to be. What is there to prove?" Eventually, after some frustration and lots of examples, it "clicked" for me, and then I found another branch of mathematics to enjoy.

    So, I suspect that contributes to my having comparative difficulty in fully understanding spoken conversation. First, I have a good vocabulary, so when someone utters a word, I'm faced with (1) was that "to", "too", ""two", "tu", or "tew"? (2) Then after I sorted that out from context, I've still got the problem of wondering how precisely does the word they used match the concept they were trying to voice. Some people are not as precise as others in their word selection. Oftentimes, it's just uttering just the fist word that comes to mind that kinda matches the thought in their mind. (3) Ladle on logical fallacies, irony, double (or triple!) entendre, puns, as well as different parts of speech (noun, verb, adjective, adverb, and things like an adjective phrase, etc., etc.). (4) For more fun, regional pronunciations add their own flair! The suggestion to "Marry merry Mary" mostly sounds like the same word said three times in a row. I actually have heard a proper Bostonian say"Pahk yah kahr in hahvahd yahd."

    Similarly, I prefer to talk with someone in person than on the phone. For me, talking on the phone is is like watching a TV with no picture — so much of the story is missing! With practice, I've gotten better, but is not anywhere at the level of alacrity with which I can read and process visual information.

    Whew! Usually (though far from always) written words benefit from more careful crafting (absent Tweets, IRC, IM, etc.).

    So, back to story at hand. Someone with a Non-Verbal Learning Disability may have none of the difficulty I just stated for dealing with verbal input. I would not be at surprised that they have better verbal skills than I!

    Lastly, it helps me to remember when I am trying to communicate with someone else, that they have different processing and reasoning skills and deficiencies. If I want to make a point, it is incumbent on me to NOT assume that what I heard/said/read/wrote was entirely accurate. It behooves me to rephrase my understanding back and confirm that what I received is what was intended (or that I said/wrote was understood as intended).

    I guess that helps explain how I came to volunteer to be an Editor on SoylentNews! =)

    --
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  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday April 29 2020, @05:41PM

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday April 29 2020, @05:41PM (#988262)

    watching a TV with no picture

    I found that watching TV with picture and sound was a great way to pick up a fair bit of foreign language - as long as the shows are "visual action" oriented, like a guy forgetting his keys, trying to open a door, slapping his forehead and saying "habe Ich mein schlussel ferguessen" (or however it's actually spelled) - even though I had a vague recollection of schlussel and ferguessen from other context, seeing it like that clicked it into useful vocabulary immediately, and apparently permanently (some 30 years ago now.)

    --
    🌻🌻 [google.com]
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2020, @08:36PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2020, @08:36PM (#988323)

    That explains a lot.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Gaaark on Thursday April 30 2020, @01:05AM (1 child)

    by Gaaark (41) on Thursday April 30 2020, @01:05AM (#988379) Journal

    At first, it was just so many lines on a page.

    This reminded me of watching Bob Ross: you go from "Well, that's nothing special: that mountain looks pretty awful and what's up with that shitty tree" to "Holy fecking feck! That's fecking beautiful!"

    --
    --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @03:58PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @03:58PM (#988613)

      They all start with just a gradient from one point to everywhere else (little Xs with the brush), and it looks like nothing...

      I found it funny my sister-in-law who does graphic design for a living hadn't ever seen him before. About 20 minutes in, she exclaimed, "He's STILL using a 2 inch brush?!?! HOW!?!?!"

  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @03:28AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @03:28AM (#988411)

    I'd arguably be diagnosable, I have absolutely no ability to visualize anything and any tasks that require visualization are impossible for me without converting to something else, either kinesthetic or just purely abstract. On top of that it can be extremely difficult to plan as I never know what something is going to look like beyond a spoken description.

    A lot of visual and spacial concepts are purely abstract and aren't really ever decoded.

    As I've grown older, I've better leaned how to work with it, but having help would have been great.

    • (Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday April 30 2020, @03:54PM

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Thursday April 30 2020, @03:54PM (#988610)

      On top of that it can be extremely difficult to plan as I never know what something is going to look like beyond a spoken description.

      Speaking of which, online shopping and "design by datasheet" is built for the engineering visualization mindset, but people who can't imagine spatial stuff can't really shop online. I can buy IKEA type stuff online and it fits; my wife simply cannot and has to go to the showroom, and sometimes gets it wrong.

      I figured out yesterday how to wedge a microwave preamp between an antenna and existing receiver input all in my head; it depends on SMA minimum bend radii and connector crimp style and order of assembly and routing of cable and stuff like that; then I did it in CAD to PROVE it'll work. People who can't visualize think the CAD magically figured it out, but really its more to prove what the visualizer already knows or prevent silly mistakes, and document for others to read. I mean verbally you can just say "wiggle the thing around in an upward direction instead of sideways and use a specific length crimped SMA connector not any old random connector, and then the minimum cable bend radius will be just fine" but sometimes its easier to just look at a CAD rendering someone else made. I've never actually figured something out with CAD. Its for proving and documenting not brainstorming.

      I mean, heck, I can even buy clothing online, which apparently a lot of people can't do.