Higher visual abilitiesd learning difficulties in children with cerebral palsy

Children with spastic cerebral palsy are often affected by linguistic and cognitive disorders, which directly involve learning processes. Up to now there are a few studies analyzing the learning skills of CP children, most of them describing the expression of specific learning disorders in CP children caused by focal damage. The collected data are often limited to the measurement of IQ and don’t take into consideration academic skills. The aim of our study is to present the neuropsychological profile of learning difficulties in a cohort of school aged children with cerebral palsy, evaluated with a specific assessment protocol. From the children with cerebral palsy referred to the Unit of Child Neurology and Psychiatry at the Civil Hospital of Brescia during the last year we selected 15 children according to the following criteria: school age, pre and perinatal brain injury documented by MRI, verbal IQ levels > 70, normal or near normal visual acuity. The neuropsychological protocol comprises standardized tests for the study of intelligence, higher visual abilities, executive functions, memory and academic skills. Our results show that CP spastic children experience functional difficulties in several neuropsychological domains.