Academic Performance of Children with Neurofibromatosis Type 1

Neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) is a genetic disorder that can contribute to a variety of challenges including visuospatial, motor, and cognitive difficulties. Poor academic performance remains a common difficulty reported by parents. Areas of academic deficits include reading comprehension, spelling, and mathematics. The purpose of the study is to examine the academic performance of children with NF1. Forty school-aged children (ages 9-13) were assessed using subtests from the Wechsler Individual Achievement Test - Third Edition (WIAT-III). WIAT-III evaluates a variety of subject areas including reading comprehension, math problem solving, sentence composition, word reading, pseudoword reading, numerical operations, and spelling which we will be utilizing to assess academic achievement. Using t-tests, the academic performance of children with NF1 will be compared to a normative sample. We will also examine the percentage of children performing at least one standard deviation below the mean on academic tasks. Since poor academic functioning has been consistently found across previous studies, we expect to see the participants differ from the normative mean and a high percentage of children falling one standard deviation below the mean. Academic performance should be a priority so that steps can be taken towards intervention, given that there is evidence that learning disabilities lead to decreased quality of life