Struggling with an Obscure Learning Disability Called Nonverbal Learning Disorder (NVLD)
I’ve been different my whole life, but not in a way most people would know how to categorize. In fact, my easy facility with words may blind most people to my crippling cognitive deficits outside the verbal domain. And if I make mention of them, they gaze at me with bemused incredulity.
My Particular Deficits
They hear me speak or they read something I’ve written and have no clue about the things I can’t do that most people can. They don’t know that I’m like a rat trapped in a torturous maze when I try to navigate my way out of a typical building or back to a place I’ve traveled to a dozen times before. That I can’t perform competent repairs in my house or maintenance on my car more complicated than screwing in a light bulb or checking the engine oil. That following complex or even simple instructions is often an insurmountable challenge for me. That even a slight change in routine or in the nature of a problem I’ve learned to solve a certain way plunges me into a state of paralyzing discombobulation. And that I have the gravest difficulty understanding how most systems are structured and with learning new procedures unless I can verbalize them. And even then I flail awkwardly and fail more often than I succeed at understanding and performing them because there’s a cavernous gulf between my mouthing the descriptive words for what I’m trying to understand and the prescriptive words for what I need to do and transmuting them into genuine understanding and fruitful action.
Some people have been haplessly bludgeoned into awareness of my intellectual shortcomings. They included my basketball teammates in high school who were forced to stop and wait impatiently countless times during team practices while our exasperated coach painstakingly demonstrated to me how to perform the simplest drills and maneuvers that I still couldn’t execute afterward. Or he diagrammed plays on the blackboard that were never more to me than an indecipherable jumble of chalk squiggles. Respite came for everyone only after I finally resigned in despair from the sport that had been my lifeblood until then.
Decades later I pestered my co-workers in a medical records department with never-ending questions about how to do my job because I couldn’t grasp how the filing system worked or memorize the unexacting sequence of steps I was supposed to execute on the computer to call up patient files for retrieval and processing.
In short, for as long as I can remember, I’ve had a larger vocabulary and been able to write and speak more fluently than most of my peers. Yet, I’ve been unable, or able only with extraordinary difficulty, to carry out other wide-ranging tasks that most people manage effortlessly.
Thus, I’ve come to regard myself as a kind of poor man’s “Rain Man,” endowed with sparse and scattered islands of modestly superior cognitive capabilities suspended in a vast sea of intellectual deficiency. And I’ve fought over the decades to prevent this from crushing my soul and from keeping me dependent on the voluntary or mandatory kindness of family, friends, strangers, and government to get by. Without their help, I’d no doubt be suffering a wretched existence on the streets. Or, since it takes a type of smarts to survive on the street that appears all but absent in me, I’d more likely be in jail or dead.
General Characteristics of NVLD and My Neuropsychological Test Results
A decade or so ago, I consulted a neuropsychologist for comprehensive testing and formal diagnosis, and he confirmed what my research had led me to suspect. He said I exhibited Nonverbal Learning Disorder (NVLD). Even though it isn’t listed in the predominant psychiatric and medical diagnostic manuals, NVLD has been acknowledged by researchers and learning specialists for decades. It’s understood to comprise a broad constellation of neurologically-based cognitive deficits in areas such as visuospatial skills, ability to draw inferences, carrying out mathematical and other abstract reasoning, organizational skills, and social competence.
Perhaps the most objective indicator of NVLD is much higher scores on verbal tests and subtests of intelligence than on nonverbal or “performance” tests thereof. I test in the “Borderline” or 70–79 range on my Performance IQ score and well into the “Very Superior” or 130+ range on my Verbal IQ score on the WAIS, a leading standardized intelligence test.
Consulting a Neuroscientist
Later, I sought additional information about NVLD from a neuroscientist at a nearby institute that studies and treats neurodevelopmental disorders. Although he worked mostly with children, he’d been approached recently by several adults from different parts of the country who reported many of the same traits and struggles I did. That is, there seemed to be a huge gap between our relatively high verbal facility and our very low aptitudes and skills in nonverbal areas.
This neuroscientist compared us to computers connected to much lower resolution digital cameras than were “neurotypical” individuals. Thus, we saw the world in much less concrete detail so that our mental images and concepts of it were blurry. He also said that if attention was like a narrow flashlight beam in a dark room, the beams of normal or neurotypical individuals moved smoothly and systematically around it, whereas the beams of people with NVLD flitted haphazardly around the room so that we were unable to piece together a coherent perspective of the entire room. Not only that, but we processed the blurry and incoherent information we received more slowly than normal people do. This squared with the fact that with every job I ever had and with most tasks I’ve taken on, I’ve been slower than everybody else even when I’ve tried to be fast. Finally, he said research suggested that our NVLD is probably the result of genetic anomalies.
Psychological Impact
I’m extremely grateful that I can speak and write as fluently as I can, but this wonderful gift has not been without its costs: people don’t believe that I can verbally express myself so well and be as challenged as I am in other areas. They think I’m joking with them, or I’m not trying hard enough, or I’m deluded about being disabled. NVLD has also made me just smart enough to be painfully aware of how dumb I am. And it has endowed me with just enough spotty intelligence to yearn to know and do countless things my deficits won’t permit me to explore in-depth and master because those pursuits also require normal to high nonverbal intelligence.
Vocational Impact
For example, in my involuntary exile from the world of physical reality, I’m drawn to the world of words, ideas, and abstractions but lack the ability to plumb its depths and be the mathematician, theoretical scientist, professional philosopher, or educator I would love to be. And just as my NVLD has precluded me from exploring deeply academic disciplines and from pursuing related professions, it also undermines my social skills enough to lock me out of the helping professions such as psychology and social work. I’ve always had the desire to help people, but no knack for understanding their problems and no people skills to succeed at helping them to succeed.
And my NVLD has also compromised other occupational prospects. I could never work in skilled trades, such as construction or automotive repair, or in technical fields, such as computer programming or IT, that require concrete and abstract visuospatial aptitudes and skills I’m sorely lacking. Even jobs such as driving a bus, truck, or taxi have been out of the question because of my extreme inability to navigate and to safely maneuver a vehicle in and around tight spaces. And I’m also ill-suited for other so-called menial jobs. My brief stint at baggage handling at an international airport years ago was a disaster because I couldn’t figure out what to do with the different kinds of bags and boxes that came my way much less carry out my duties with swift efficiency. And I failed as a switchboard operator in a call center because I couldn’t remember what I needed to know or access information quickly when people called in to be connected or referred to the right department or facility.
Impact On My Writing
NVLD even impacts my greatest strength, which appears to be writing. My deficits in discerning nonverbal patterns, in doing abstract and metaphorical thinking, and in my ability to form clear mental images of physical details and conceptualize mechanical functions severely limit the range of writing I can do for remunerative publication. After all, if I struggle in all these areas, how can I author a cogent philosophical, theological, or scientific treatise about a subject or issue of compelling interest to me and to my intended audience? And how can I explain social and cultural patterns I don’t understand or describe physical settings and characteristics for works of fiction or nonfiction well enough to write engaging prose in either domain?
NVLD’s Repercussions and Their Remediation
NVLD is an obscure malady with potentially profound repercussions for the estimated 1% of the population afflicted with it. Those of us with NVLD often have difficulty relating normally to others, develop psychological problems such as depression, and fall between the cracks of government services for the disabled, especially if we’re adults. And, because our deficits are so wide-ranging in scope, we struggle constantly to compensate for them. For instance, a blind person can often use her mind to circumvent the logistical challenges of her visual blindness, but when one’s mind itself is “blind” at internalizing compensatory strategies, with what does it circumvent its own blindness?
The sooner researchers and society learn more about NVLD, the more effectively they can provide emotional and practical support to the millions of us compromised by this unfortunate condition. And we, in turn, can support ourselves, relate more skillfully to our family, friends, co-workers, and other people, and contribute more richly to society.
