The terminology for attentional disorders is constantly changing, to the confusion and consternation of both parents and professionals. Often, children with attention deficit disorders exhibit notable hyperactivity. Diagnosis of such hyperactivity is separate and not necessarily a part of all attention deficit disorders. Girls with both mild attentional and learning disabilities are more likely to withdraw, try harder to compensate, and successfully keep their problem concealed, perhaps later developing psychological problems as the cost of this compensation. Although LD and attention deficit disorders are commonly related, early identification of attentional disorders may or may not help the identification of associated learning disabilities depending on whether or not one disorder masks the other.
Physical disabilities can lead directly to educational problems as well.
For such children, the discipline of speech-language pathology has developed a number of intervention techniques that can effectively be used to assess and treat their specific disability. In this case, educational difficulty may be symptomatic of a critical illness. In fact, in the case of a tumor, a careful documentation of academic deterioration may provide the earliest clue to what may very well be a life-threatening situation. Although rare, brain tumors highlight the need to take a serious approach to diagnosing the underlying causes of educational failure. If the child's learning difficulties are passed off as motivational, the resulting failure to assess the child might delay a serious medical diagnosis in a case where time is critical to long-term survival.