Psycho-educational Diagnostic Evaluation and Profiling of Learning Disabilities

This paper examines the subtest scaled scores from WISC-III and standard scores from six literacy tests of four primary school boys diagnosed separately to have dyslexia, hyperlexia, nonspecific reading disability, and nonverbal learning disability respectively.Through the psycho-educational diagnostic evaluation and profiling (PEDEP) assessment results, findings of this study show overlapping traits of the four learning disabilities and also support the working definitions of the respective disabilities.The study suggests that the four learning disabilities are not a discrete condition per se, but their symptoms are distributed on a continuum with manifestations in different subtypes and related anomalies.The primary aim of this paper is to inform professionals working with children with learning disabilities to be prudent when making diagnoses as there is no one foolproof assessment tool or procedure, and that a differential diagnosis is preferred in order to propose a definitive prognosis.Finally, limitations and implications are also discussed in this paper.