[1] Intellectual disability, also known as general learning disability,[2] and previously known as mental retardation (a term now considered offensive),[3][4] is a generalized disorder characterized by significantly impaired cognitive functioning and deficits in two or more adaptive behaviors that appears before adulthood.
Social support can be a crucial component for students with specific learning disabilities in the school system.
With the right support and intervention, people with specific learning disabilities can succeed in school and be successful later in life.
However, the intellectual abilities of a person with a brain injury are likely to be interfered with by the resulting thought coordination and communication difficulties, which can make it difficult for them to express themselves in a manner intelligible to others.
Dementia is a serious loss of cognitive ability in a previously unimpaired person, beyond what might be expected from normal aging.
In the early stages of Alzheimer's disease, whose symptoms of dementia are called mild cognitive impairment, the person typically loses 8 to 10 IQ points per year, with the result that a person of previously normal intelligence usually becomes intellectually disabled in less than five years.
[7] Research documents the importance of providing those with intellectual disabilities alternative spaces and contexts where they feel included and can assert their own definitions of ability and what it is to be "normal.