Neuropsychological profiles of children with learning disabilities and children with documented brain damage

This study sought to identify clusters or subtypes of children with learning disabilities (LD) and documented brain damage (BD) on the basis of a comprehensive neuro-psychological battery. Sixty subjects, 24 with LD and 36 with BD, participated in the study. The standard scores for several measures from the Intermediate Battery of the Halstead-Reitan Neuropsychological Battery and other select measures were submitted to Q-Technique factor analysis for the entire sample. Five clusters were determined. No one cluster was composed exclusively of LD or BD subjects, with the proportions of LD and BD varying considerably from one cluster to the next. There were some qualitative differences between the clusters, while quantitative dif-ferences also figured prominently. Despite several decades of research in the area of learning disabilities, there is still little consensus on many essential issues, including the etiology of learning problems, the structural charac-teristics of the disorder, and the relation-ship of people with learning disabilities (LD) to other clinical groups. Indeed, the very existence of the disorder has been challenged (Algozzine & Ysseldyke, 1983