Autism and Learning Disabilities

Is autism a learning disability? Learn more abut the process of diagnosing a learning disability, and how these can be treated and managed effectively.

Ketrick: My name is Ketrick and I'm from Denver, Colorado. Is Autism a learning disability or a brain disorder and how is it diagnosed? Albert Galaburda: All learning disabilities have to do with the brain, the alternative to think that you teach someone to be a learning disable that is not in your brain, that it comes from outside, some people believe that. But most experts believe that it all starts in the brain. So, Autism is a one form of learning disability, it is a severe learning disability in many cases. It's not called the Learning Disability, it's called a Pervasive Developmental Disorder instead. It contains difficulty with learning certain kinds of things within it but there are other symptoms like language development, socialization, the existence of unusual behaviors that accompany the diagnoses. We have to remember that Autism can be very mild and people are very successful or it could be very severe, people with severe learning disability, no language present lots of extra behaviors that are undesirable. So, it is a range of diagnoses that has to do with brain development.