Disturbances or delays in expressive language or listening comprehension are better predictors of academic problems beyond the preschool years. Reasoning disabilities may occur, such as problems in conceptualizing, abstracting, generalizing, and organizing and planning information for problem solving. Diagnosis Medical, intellectual, educational, linguistic, and psychologic evaluations are necessary for determining deficiencies in and discrepancies between skills and cognitive processes such as attention, perception, memory, and reasoning. Social and emotional-behavioral evaluations are also necessary in planning treatment and monitoring progress. Young children should be evaluated for developmental level with use of standardized criteria.
Intellectual evaluation includes verbal and nonverbal intelligence testing.
Children with language, reading, and generalized learning disabilities tend to have more difficulties with functions controlled by the left hemisphere. Educational evaluation identifies strengths and weaknesses in reading, writing, spelling, and arithmetic skills. Reading evaluations measure abilities in word decoding and recognition, passage comprehension, and reading fluency. Writing samples should be obtained to evaluate spelling, syntax, and fluency of ideas. Arithmetic ability should be assessed in terms of computation skills, knowledge of operations, and understanding of mathematical concepts.