Lesser Known Disorders
Each issue of this series contains at least three lesser known disorders. Some of these disorders may contain subtypes which will also be presented. You will also notice that each disorder has a code. These codes represent the coding system for all disabilities and disorders listed in the Educator’s Diagnostic Manual(EDM) Wiley Publications.
Disorders in this issue:
LD 8.02-Social Nonverbal Learning Disability
Disability Category: Learning Disability
Definition
A type of nonverbal learning disability specifically associated with difficulties in perceiving and interpreting social cues and/or social situations. It is the learning disability where primary deficits are in social judgment and social interaction (Nonverbal Learning Disorders Association, 2001).
Explanation
Students with Social Nonverbal Learning Disabilities often have trouble understanding nonverbal communication such as facial expression, body language, and tone of voice. They may not “get” your shrugs, winks, grins, or wrinkled foreheads. They may have trouble adjusting to transitions and novel situations or difficulty gauging appropriate “personal space.” Their deficits in social judgment and social interaction may cause them to seem immature. Other people may consider them annoying (Nonverbal Learning Disorders Association, 2001).
One result of having trouble processing nonverbal and spatial information is missing or misinterpreting subtle social cues, like facial expressions, gestures and tones of voice. For example, a phrase like “nice going” means something different when you’ve just dropped a ball or tripped over a skipping rope (again) than when you’ve gotten a perfect score on a spelling test. Confusing the two can spell “disaster” on the playground.
Unlike students who have difficulties reading but do well with social and sports activities, students with nonverbal LD are affected in all areas. Their form of learning disability can lead to social isolation. Consequently, these children will sometimes try to alleviate this by interacting only with adults, who are normally more appreciative of their verbal strengths and less concerned about physical awkwardness or violations of social conventions (Wagner, 2003).
It should be noted that any medical problems associated with this child’s physical and motoric abilities have been ruled out as a primary cause of the child’s difficulties. The difficulties are in the internal processing of information, not due to a physical or motoric impairment (International Dyslexia Association, 2006).
HI 1.01-Auditory Agnosia
Disability Category: Hearing Impairment
Definition
Auditory Agnosia refers to the inability to recognize specific sounds in the context of intact hearing. There is a distinction in this syndrome between pure word deafness, that is considered an agnosia for auditory/verbal information, and auditory agnosia, that involves an agnosia for environmental, nonverbal sounds. Cortical deafness is also a term applied to patients who essentially do not respond to any auditory information even when hearing is intact. Finally, receptive amusia is a term that refers to agnosia for music (National Academy of Neuropsychology, 2000).
Explanation
Agnosia is a rare disorder characterized by an inability to recognize and identify objects or persons despite having knowledge of the characteristics of the objects or persons. People with agnosia may have difficulty recognizing the geometric features of an object or face or may be able to perceive the geometric features but not know what the object is used for or whether a face is familiar or not.
Agnosia can be limited to one sensory modality such as vision or hearing. For example, a person may have difficulty in recognizing an object as a cup or identifying a sound as a cough. Agnosia can result from strokes, dementia, or other neurological disorders. It typically results from damage to specific brain areas in the occipital or parietal lobes of the brain. People with agnosia may retain their cognitive abilities in other areas (National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, 2005b).
HI 1.01a-Auditory/verbal information Agnosia
A type of auditory agnosia characterized by an inability to hear words.
HI 1.01b-Cortical deafness
A type of auditory agnosia characterized by an inability to respond to any auditory information even when hearing is intact.
HI 1.01c-Non verbal Auditory Agnosia
Non verbal Auditory Agnosia is the inability to hear environmental sounds such as a car starting or a dog barking.
HI 1.01dc-Receptive Amusia
A type of auditory agnosia characterized by the inability to hear music.
SL 10.01-Receptive Morphological Language Disorder
Disability Category: Speech and Language
Definition
A type of receptive language disorder specifically associated with difficulties in the understanding of grammatical structure of words (Gargiulio, 2004).
Explanation
Morphology is the set of rules that govern the parts of words that form the basic elements of meanings and structures of words (Deutsch-Smith, 2004). For example, prefixes and suffixes change the meaning of the roots of specific words: An “-ed” at the end of a verb changes the tense to past (cover and covered); an “un” at the beginning of a word means that something is not (cover and uncover). A student with Receptive Morphological Language Disorder may not understand that something will occur in the future or has already occurred because he/she has difficulties understanding the tenses of words.
Download this Issue
To Download a PDF file version of this Issue of the NASET’sLesser Known Disorders in Special Education Series – CLICK HERE
