Soft Neurological Signs and Learning Disabilities

One often finds that “soft neurological signs” are mentioned in clinical reports of learning-disabled children. The term “hard neurological signs” points to behavioral signs that always reflect brain injury, for example seizures, cerebral palsy, cranial nerve abnormalities leading to blindness and deafness and microcephaly.

Soft neurological signs, on the other hand, point to a lag in children's gross- and fine-motor development, such as poor balance and coordination difficulties. Studies trying to prove that the learning disabled have more neurological signs than typical learners, fared no better than EEG-studies. In one study, in fact, children with the most neurological signs actually had the fewest learning problems. In the most comprehensive study of this type in the U.S.A., the so-called National Collaborative Perinatal Project, the relationship between neurological signs and learning disabilities in 7-year-olds could account for only one percent of the learning problems.