01 NRDC Dyslexia 1-88 update - Texthelp

Developmental dyslexia in adults: a research review 13
Part one
Key issues in dyslexia research
Introduction
Why do some people find it so difficult to learn how to read, write and spell? Are their
difficulties part of a normal continuum of human opportunity, aptitude and motivation, or are
they caused by innate and circumscribed brain abnormalities? Can the research on
developmental dyslexia in children help adult literacy tutors to respond to the needs of these
students? Is it helpful for tutors to think of some of their students as dyslexics and of others
as non-dyslexics, or ordinary poor readers? Do the categorical distinctions embodied in terms
such as ‘dyslexic’ and ‘non-dyslexic’ correspond to distinct realities? If there are categorically
distinct realities for dyslexic and non-dyslexic students, in what way or ways do those realities
differ? Would it be helpful to screen adult students for dyslexia? Are the limitations of
screening fully appreciated? Even if it would be helpful to screen adult students, would it be
feasible to do so? How does a diagnosis of dyslexia affect students and their tutors? Should
dyslexics have a different curriculum from that followed by ordinary poor readers? If so, what
differences should there be? Should dyslexics be taught by a different method? Is dyslexia one
thing or many? If dyslexia is more than one thing, do different explanations of dyslexia
indicate different responses for different dyslexic students?
All of these questions are debatable and at times the debate becomes animated. Part of the
explanation for this might be that while research into dyslexia generates all of the excitement
of the California Gold Rush it also stirs up much of the heat and dust. For a number of years,
it has been ‘commonplace to bemoan the state of confusion and disagreement in the field’
(Stanovich, 1988). A prominent researcher has referred to ‘the competitive viciousness that so
characterises the dyslexia ecosystem’, describing it as ‘an explosive mixture of high numbers
of the affected, high parental emotion, yet poor understanding of the condition, hence poor
definition and unreliable methods for judging the outcome of treatments’ (Stein, 2002).
As in any gold rush, fool’s gold is found everywhere. A standard textbook on remedial
education observes that ‘the term dyslexia is overused in the popular press, which gives an
inaccurate impression that everyone with reading or literacy problems has dyslexia’ (Kirk et
al., 1993). Overuse of the term in the press, which may reflect and perhaps encourage both
mistaken diagnoses by practitioners and face-saving explanations by poor readers and their
families, has led to redefinitions that are now much broader than their equivalents of a
hundred years ago. This breadth takes many directions, resulting in ‘the vast dimensionality
of the terminological space in which dyslexia exists’ (Grigorenko, 2001) and ‘the current chaos
in the field’ (Frith, 1995), where dyslexia may strike observers as ‘the equivalent of a
Rorschach test’ telling more about the researcher than about dyslexia itself (Fawcett &
Nicolson, 1994).
If it is still true, as it often appears to be, that ‘most of what we can say about dyslexia is
tentative, speculative, and controversial’ (Ables et al., 1971), that ‘the standard diagnostic
criteria for diagnosing dyslexia cast much too wide a net’ (Seidenberg et al., 1986) and that
‘dyslexia carries with it so many empirically unverified connotations and assumptions that
many researchers and practitioners prefer to avoid the term’ (Stanovich, 1994), then it should