A child with a sequence disability might hit the baseball then run to third rather than first base or have difficulty with board games that require moving in a particular sequence. Or when setting the dinner table, he or she might have trouble placing each item in the proper place. Once information is recorded in the brain and laced in the right sequence, one must be able to infer meaning. Most learning disabled children have only minor difficulties in this area. If the disability in this area is too great, the child is apt to be functioning at a retarded level.
Some children do, however, have problems with abstraction.
The teacher may be doing a language-arts exercise with a group of second graders. He or she reads a story about a police officer, let us say. A child with an abstraction disability may not be able to answer such a question. He or she can only talk about the particular officer in the story and not about law officers in general. Older children might have difficulty understanding jokes.