Minor physical anomalies: relation to later achievement

A substantial number of school-age children with learning disability are characterized as being distractible, and there is a congenital contributor to distractibility that has shown relation to school achievement, and to learning disability in particular. This congenital contributor can be assessed at any time from the neonatal through the early school-age period by a 10-minute examination. It seems likely that the basis for the congenital contributor to learning disability is an information processing defect that appears as early as the first year of life in the form of a rapid waning of attention when tired, an overly slow waning when in a rested state, and a failure to form cognitive schemas from perceptual input in either case. The congenital characteristic could also affect learning disability by its association with less than optimal peer relations. The latter could, in turn, affect the child's link to the classroom learning situation.