I've seen this kind of pattern in students who may be very good at each area individually, but struggle to transfer, integrate, and generalize. They may know all the right answers in isolation, but can't seem to make the leap to applying the skills in fluid, live situations. Problem-solving, especially when you don't know the ground rules, and have to deduce them from the data, or infer them from partial patterns, can be a challenge. Again, this intuitively connects to difficulties with social situations, which are, by their nature, a constantly-shifting system of inconsistent, complex rules, full of incomplete data sets. And they take place in real-time, with no pause, rewind, or slo-mo button. Past the primary years, you begin to see relative weaknesses in reading comprehension, as inference becomes more important. Writing with literary/character analysis can be difficult, too, again because of the role of inference, and all the imaginative/perspective-taking leaps that we demand of students in higher-level writing tasks.
Speculatively, I wonder how many ivory tower researchers are a bit like this, especially those stereotypical inch-wide-mile-deep types, with no common sense survival skills.
There may possibly be some overlap with ASD, too, as one of the distinctions between NVLD and ASD is that with ASD, the visual-spatial skills are often spared, but abstraction can be challenging. I would certainly start off with both NVLD and ASD in the diagnostic mix.
What do you see in your DD/DS? Does any of this sound consistent? Inconsistent?
