"In the United States and Canada, the terms learning disability, learning disabilities, and learning disorders (LD) refer to a group of disorders that affect a broad range of academic and functional skills including the ability to speak, listen, read, write, spell, reason and organize information.
As the term is generally understood in the US and Canada, learning disability is not indicative of low intelligence. Indeed, research indicates that some people with learning disabilities may have average or above-average intelligence. Causes of learning disabilities include a deficit in the brain that affects the processing of information.
In the UK, terms such as specific learning difficulty (SpLD), dyslexia, dyspraxia and dyscalculia are more usually used to cover the type and range of learning difficulties referred to in the United States and Canada as "learning disability". In the UK, "learning disability" is more usually taken to refer to a range of conditions, including autism and autistic spectrum disorders, as well as many others, almost invariably associated with general more severe cognitive impairments; the term therefore generally is taken in the UK to be indicative of low intelligence, and to cover conditions that in the US and Canada are termed mental retardation. In the UK, terms such as "mental retardation" and "mentally retarded" have an offensive and pejorative association that is absent in the US and Canada."
Source: Wikipedia
