Customer Reviews

Nonverbal Learning Disabilities: The Syndrome and the Model

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Although this book is considered one of the seminal works describing Non-verbal Learning Disabilities, and the data are quite informative, I find the writing heavy and laborious. It's probably worth slogging through it if you have a professional interest, but, otherwise, look for something more accessible.

If you're willing to work to slog through it. However, Rourke is guilty of ignoring data that don't fit his view of NVLD/NLD. For example, he states repeatedly that the line between HFA (high-functioning autism) and Asperger's Syndrome is so blurred that the two should not be characterized as different conditions. On the same sort of muddy evidence, however, he claims that NLD is a separate condition for Asperger's Syndrome: despite the near identical "required symptoms" for the two conditions, despite the shared common comorbidities (such as dyscalculia, dysgraphia, depression, problems with visuo-spatial orientation, sensory integration disorder, etc., etc.), and despite extensive research including a study by Klin and Volkmar (much admired researchers in the field of autism and Asperger's) that showed that some 80% of their Asperger's clients at the Yale Child Study Center diagnostically "overlapped" with the NLD criteria proposed by Rourke.

Rourke has proposed guidelines for diagnosing NLD for the next revision of the ICD-10. This, of course, assumes that NLD continues to be classified separately from Asperger's Syndrome, and not as a "milder version".

I, by the way, have two professional diagnoses of Asperger's Syndrome, and another professional diagnosis of NLD with Asperger's Characteristics.