Nick - Pearson

Summary: nickNick demonstrates many cognitive strengths, especially in verbal fluidreasoning, lexical and semantic knowledge, and oral expression. However,his educational history—including his response to intervention; parent,teacher, and student interviews; classroom and testing observations; andstandardized test scores—consistently indicates the presence of a SpecificLearning Disability in mathematical reasoning and calculation. His specificproblems, which appear to be limited to math, are:#1: General cognitive weaknesses related to nonverbal concept formationand fluid reasoning, visual-spatial organization and imaging, abstractcategorical or sequential reasoning, and deficits in working memoryand processing speed.#2: Math-related processing deficits related to rapid automatic switching,quantitative and spatial working memory, and executive functions(sustained and switching attention, multi-tasking, and self-monitoring).#3: Math-specific skill deficits related to automaticity of number factretrieval, understanding part-whole relationships, knowledge ofalgorithms that apply to more complex problem solving, and use ofadaptive strategies to solve math problems.#4: Math-specific anxiety and frustration that exacerbate problems withattention and working memory, resulting in reduced engagement,persistence, and self-confidence so that Nick is becoming moreresistant to instruction. Further, his difficulty connecting what he mustmaster in math to a real-world application may result in less intrinsicmotivation to put forth the required extra effort.16 nick