Assessing Developmental Learning and Communication Disorders in Hispanic Children: A Neuropsychological Perspective

Abstract

Developmental learning and communication disabilities are relatively common disorders during childhood and adolescence. Often, reading, writing, mathematics, and language disorders are included in these two umbrella categories. Perhaps the most widely used classification system for learning and communication developmental disabilities is the one offered by the American Psychiatric Association in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR) , as for all cases of developmental disorders, the DSM-IVs diagnostic criteria include the failure to perform adequately on "individually standardized measures" of reading accuracy or comprehension, mathematical ability, writing skills, and language related to disorders in reading, mathematics, writing, and communication, respectively. Performance on such tests may well be "substantially below that expected given a person's chronological age, measured intelligence, and age-appropriate education." Also, these criteria give strong weight to academic test scores, but fail to define more clearly the underlying cognitive difficulties. Despite such drawbacks, those disabilities are thought to be related to dysfunctions in the way that children perceive, process, organize, integrate, store, or retrieve information. Significantly, certain specific cognitive mechanisms underlying these learning disabilities have been identified. For example, children with reading disorders, dyslexia frequently present metalinguistic disabilities, low vocabulary size, and defects in their phonological abilities, whereas children with mathematical disorders, dyscalculia present some combination of primary deficits in the appreciation of magnitudes and working memory. These cognitive deficits can be identified through neuropsychological testing; therefore, including neuropsychological data in assessments of children with learning disorders provides supplementary cognitive information that may facilitate cognitive interventions. While the subgroups of learning difficulties have been classified on the basis of neuropsychological assessments, including low linguistic functioning, limited abstract thinking, low sequencers, and poor body awareness and control, most categorizations of these phenomena are still grounded on the presence of verbal vs. nonverbal problems. This chapter analyzes variables related to the complex assessment of learning and communication disorders in Hispanic children, including characteristics of the Spanish language and the influence of bilingualism. It also reviews the instruments that are available in English and Spanish for carrying out assessments of these children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)