Diagnostic Criteria
A. Mathematical ability, as measured by individually administered standardized tests, is substantially below that expected given the person's chronological age, measured intelligence, and age-appropriate education.
B. The disturbance in Criterion A significantly interferes with academic achievement or activities of daily living that require mathematical ability.
C. If a sensory deficit is present, the difficulties in mathematical ability are in excess of those usually associated with it.
The key feature to identifying someone with a learning disorder is an ability in math that is lower than their general, average or overall abilities. If you could view an individuals skills on a scale from 0-10 in areas of learning, such as math, writing, reading, communication, etc – a learning disorder would be a score that is greatly lower than all of the other scores. For example for a math learning disorder, if your average skills in other areas rate at an 8, and your math skills rate at a 5 – it is likely that you have a learning disability of mathematics.
The exact cause of a learning disorder is not known, however there are some major risk factors including:
There is no cure for learning disorders