"Children with special learning disabilities are those who exhibit a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or using spoken or written languages. These may be manifested in disorders of listening, thinking, reading, writing, spelling or arithmetic. They include conditions which have been referred to as perceptual handicaps, minimal brain dysfunction (M.B.D.), dyslexia and aphasia (a writing disorder stemming from a disorder of verbal expression leading of faulty written expressive functions). They do not include learning problems that are due primarily to visual, hearing or motor handicaps, to mental retardation, emotional disturbance or to environmental disadvantages."

The Learning Disabled child is often an intelligent child who fails at school. A relatively high verbal ability might be present, but non-verbal mental ability may be low. This discrepancy results in the child remaining largely incompetent in social maturity, and this may again affect academic achievement.