ABSTRACT
The three large study groups of children with learning difficulties (LD), hyperkinetic-impulsive behavior (HI), and neurological “soft signs” are characterized in terms of individual symptoms. The group derived on the basis of psychologists’ ratings (the HIs) is additionally characterized by excerpts from the summary reports of these children’s behavior. To determine a final characteristic of the LD children, the frequencies of “suspicious” and “abnormal” ratings of their neurological and behavioral status were determined. The verbal-performance IQ discrepancies followed the same pattern as noted among the HI children. Only four children out of the MBD cohort of 29,889 were given extreme ratings for hyperactivity, impulsivity, short attention span, and emotional lability. The greatest deficits among the HI children evident in these deviation scores were in the Bender-Gestalt, arithmetic, spelling, and Draw-A-Person tests. The black HI children performed relatively poorly on the Auditory-Vocal Association test. The descriptions of these children reflected much more serious behavioral problems.
