Representation of route and survey descriptions in children with nonverbal (visuospatial) learning disabilities

This study aims to investigate the types of difficulty encountered by children with nonverbal (visuospatial) learning disabilities (NLD) during the processing of spatial information derived from descriptions. Two spatial descriptions – one in survey, one in route perspective – and one nonspatial description were orally presented to children aged 9–12 divided in three groups: (i) with NLD (N = 12), (ii) with reading disability (RD) (N = 11), and (iii) without learning disabilities who served as controls (N = 16). Children performed two tasks: sentence verification and location. In the verification task, NLD performed worse in survey text than control and RD groups. Moreover, in the location task NLD were worse than controls in both survey and route descriptions, but significantly poorer than the RD group only in the survey description. The results are discussed considering their implications in understanding the neuropsychological profile of NLD and the processes involved by different types of spatial descriptions.