EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONING IN CHILDREN WITH NON-VERBAL LEARNING DISABILITY

Non Verbal learning disability (NVLD) is a disorder which is usually seen with significant discrepancies with regards to verbal skills and motor skills, visual spatial and social skills. This becomes a major concern as it leads to learning difficulties. Our objective of the research is to study executive functioning in children with non-verbal learning disability. A purposive sample of 45 children; 15 children with Non-verbal learning disability (NVLD) (as per Children’s Nonverbal Learning Disabilities Scale), 15 children diagnosed with Attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD) according to DSM-5 and 15 healthy children with a mean age of 9.53 years (SD=2.13), 10.27 years (SD=2.40) and 10.67 years (SD=2.13) were selected from outpatient services of Department of Psychiatry according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria. For the purpose of the study Vanderbilt ADHD Diagnostic Parents’ Rating Scale, Children’s Nonverbal Learning Disabilities (NVLD) Scale and NIMHANS neuropsychological battery for children particularly- verbal fluency (FAS), verbal N back task, visual N back task, visuo-spatial working memory, wisconsin card sorting test (WCST) and maze were used. The findings of the present study indicated that there were significant differences among the three groups with respect to error verbal N back 2 (F=4.24, P<0.05), error Visual N back 2 (F=58.95, P<0.01) and set shifting (F=13.02, P<0.01) which indicates all three groups have significant difference statistically in terms of executive functioning. From the study it can be concluded that as compared to healthy group, children with NVLD and ADHD performed poor on the tasks of verbal as well as visual working memory and between ADHD and NVLD group children with ADHD performed better than children with NVLD. Study also showed that children with ADHD and healthy control performed better than children with NVLD on the task of cognitive set-shifting.