Neuropsychological Abilities and Academic Gains in Learning Disabled Children: A Follow-up Study over an Academic School Year

We evaluated 22 learning disabled students with documented learning disabilities on standardized academic achievement tests at the beginning and end of one academic school year. In addition, at the beginning of the school year, neuropsychological measures were also administered and readministered at 1.5 year follow-up to a subset of these children (N =16). As a group, subjects demonstrated impairment on neuropsychological measures and these measures were stable over the follow-up period. Subjects improved from the beginning of the school year to the end of the school year in the academic area of written language. Specific patterns of neuropsychological ability correlated with academic improvement in specific areas. Our preliminary results suggest that neuropsychological testing may be useful in predicting academic improvement and ultimately in designing educational strategies for learning disabled children.