Children with adequate academic achievement scores referred for evaluation of school difficulties: information...

Children (7-11 years old) with standardized academic achievement test scores in the normal range referred for evaluation of learning problems were compared to low-achieving children matched for age, sex, and nonverbal cognitive ability, and to children with no known history of learning difficulty matched for age, sex, and reading (all N = 65) on a battery of computerized tasks of nonverbal information processing. The normally achieving referred children performed similarly to the low-achieving group but worse than reading-matched nonreferred counterparts. These findings suggest that children who struggle in school yet perform adequately on standardized achievement measures can have heightened neurodevelopmental vulnerability. Implications are discussed with respect to the underlying substrate of learning disabilities, as well as their diagnosis, classification, and remediation.