title: Representation of survey and route spatial descriptions in children with nonverbal (visuospatial) learning disabilities.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Developmental Psychology, Università degli Studi di Padova, Via Venezia 8, Padua, Italy. irene.mammarella@unipd.it
authors.forename: Irene C
authors.initials: IC
authors.lastname: Mammarella
authors.forename: Chiara
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Meneghetti
authors.forename: Francesca
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Pazzaglia
authors.forename: Filippo
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Gitti
authors.forename: Claudia
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Gomez
authors.forename: Cesare
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Cornoldi
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D032882:Comprehension / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007859:Learning Disabilities / Q000503:physiopathology*; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology; D018579:Patient Selection; D011340:Problem Solving / Q000502:physiology; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology; D013064:Speech Disorders / Q000503:physiopathology; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology