And, once again, these results contribute to the ongoing debate about the validity of the criterion of discrepancy for
diagnosis of learning disorders as used within ICD-10. In our study, children with learning difficulties differed in terms of
intelligence but they were characterized by the same underlying working memory deficits. Thus, we could conclude that
the two groups with poor school achievement (LIQ-LA and NIQ-LA) are more similar than their different IQs might suggest
and therefore should not be treated as suffering from fundamentally different learning problems (which is the rationale of
the criterion of discrepancy). The criterion of discrepancy is about to be abandoned in many countries and is no longer in
use in DSM 5—and our results may be taken as an argument in favor of this development.