Mild Intellectual Disability and borderline intellectual functioning: Just a question of IQ? [Disabilità intellettiva lieve e funzionamento intellettivo limite: una questione solo di QI?]

This Article reports the results of a study conducted by the Neuropsychology Service of the Department of Pediatrics and Child Psychiatry («Sa pienza», University of Rome) on child and adolescent subjects affected by non-syndromic Intellectual Disability (ID). The work was conducted on 44 subjects: 22 subjects with Borderline Intellectual Functioning (BIF) and 22 with Mild Intellectual Disability (MID), 25 males and 19 females, aged between 8.2 and 15.5. The aim was to determine whether subjects with MID and subjects with BIF show a different severity level of intellectual disability (quantitative hypothesis) nor different deficits of functioning (qualitative hypothesis). Results highlighted a significant difference when QIs were compared among the two different groups, demonstrating that BIF and MID are well differentiated regarding the severity of intellectual deficit. No significant differences were found in reading profile and in psychobehavioral profiles in the sample.