School of Thought

Nonverbal Learning Disability (NLD): What is it?

  

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Nonverbal Learning Disability (NLD): What is it?
Kate Mitchell, Director of Dominion Education Center

The research shows that nearly 95% of our communication is nonverbal. Among otherthings, this includes the various gestures we use when explaining something, the tone we use to stress the urgency of a situation, or even the expression on our faces that often reveals our emotional state.

Put simply, NLD impairs ones ability to process this nonverbal information. Now that you know these gestures and expressions account for nine-tenths of our communications back and forth to one another, how do you think it might feel if you are not able to recognize and interpret these nonverbal cues? How hard would it be to know how to respond if you can’t hear that someone has just asked a question or see that they are really asking to be reassured?

Individuals with a nonverbal learning disability experience exactly this kind of frustration. Unlike a verbal learning disability that impacts reading, writing, spelling and/or math; nonverbal LD causes problems with intuition, organization, and visual-spatial recognition. NLD also results in limited understanding of cause-and-effect. This can make it very difficult for individuals to know what to do or how to act in different situations.

In fact, it is not uncommon to hear individuals with nonverbal learning disabilities described in one (or many) of the following ways:

• Extremely focused on the small details
  • When asked what was for lunch at school, he will begin with the morning bus ride and describe everything until he gets to lunch and then blurt out, “Pizza!”
• Doesn’t seem to “get” nonverbal cues
  • She doesn’t see how her classmates are responding when she stands too close to them.
• May be inappropriate in social situations
  • He talks loudly to his classmate during a presentation, not recognizing that it is appropriate to whisper or remain silent.
• Understands things in a very linear way; sequence is important
• Abstract concepts tend to be very confusing; cause-and-effect is often not recognized
• “Shuts down" if experiencing too much pressure to ‘perform’
• Have few friends; those they do have tend to be from older    
  groups
• Very talkative and yet doesn’t really say much

At a time when we are encouraged to provide multi-sensory instruction and to include activities, movement, and pictures in our lessons it is imperative that we not forget the NLD child and what this all means for him or her in the classroom. We must remember that tactile, kinesthetic, visual-spatial, and experiential learning does not come easy for the individual with a nonverbal learning disability. We must remember that they rely heavily on the text that accompanies our teaching and without it can struggle to grasp what might otherwise come easily to them. What this means for us, as educators and/or parents, is that we must explain everything and to do so with both spoken and written words in hopes to better reach every child with a nonverbal learning disability.