01 NRDC Dyslexia 1-88 update - Texthelp

Developmental dyslexia in adults: a research review 15
respect to phonics and whole language (Carrier, 1983; Dudley-Marling & Murphy, 1997;
Liberman & Liberman, 1992; Postman, 1970; Rayner et al., 2001; Stanovich, 1999). As
elsewhere in politics, partisans tend to confuse values with facts. Even so, a mature science
of reading instruction can reconcile the opposing positions (Beard & McKay, 1998); its basis of
reconciliation will be an agreement that ‘to get started one may need phonics, to get fluent
one needs practice, to keep practising one needs enjoyment’ and ‘to have enjoyment one
needs a real book’ (Nicolson, 2002).
It is a judgment of value—endorsed by the national strategy for improving adult literacy and
numeracy skills, Skills for Life (DfES, 2001)—that people who struggle with reading, whatever
the origin of their problems with reading, should be helped to read to the best of their ability
and to adopt coping strategies where their reading ability proves insufficient for their social
and economic well-being and personal fulfilment. It is an assertion of fact—critically
examined in this review—that developmental dyslexia, stipulatively defined as a specific
learning disability with a biological origin, largely accounts for the skills deficits of some adult
literacy learners whereas the skills deficits of others are largely accounted for by experiential
factors. A successful intervention policy for poor readers will avoid confusing facts with
values. Both are important, but they are important in different ways.
Either way, a general theory of adult reading skills problems is as likely a prospect as a
general theory of holes. Even for deficits with a neurological origin, ‘given the complexity of
the task and the kinds of capacities it involves, it would be very surprising if reading disability
did not have multiple causes’ (Seidenberg, 1992). However, despite a common assumption to
the contrary, not every reading skill deficit has a neurological origin, even though it
necessarily has neurological consequences. There may be a parallel here with research in
other fields of enquiry, where theoretical developments have been driven by cognitive
neuropsychological models in which the disorder ceases to be simply a useful way of thinking
about the world and instead becomes reified as something with an independent existence,
which then needs to be explained as an innate psychological dysfunction caused by a specific
brain abnormality (Sonuga-Barke, 2002).
Yet, in addition to possible biological causes of reading difficulties, there are possible
experiential causes (Bryant & Bradley, 1985; Cashdan, 1969; Chall, 1967; Chall et al., 1990;
Clay, 1987; Cox & Jones, 1983; Ellis & Large, 1987; Gough & Tunmer, 1986; Jackson &
Coltheart, 2001; Lawton, 1968; MacKay, 1999; Maughan & Yule, 1994; P. Mortimore et al.,
1988; Ravenette, 1968; Rutter et al., 1975; Share et al., 1984; Snowling, 1991, 1998; Spear-
Swerling & Sternberg, 1996; Stubbs, 1980; Vellutino et al., 1996; Vernon, 1957). One of the
experiential causes may be inexplicit teaching, especially teaching that fails to appreciate the
student’s problems in understanding concepts expressed in particular ways (Marcel, 1978).
Whatever the balance of biological and experiential causes in any individual case, their
interaction in the course of development leads to ever more complex outcomes
(Bronfenbrenner & Ceci, 1994; Gottlieb & Halpern, 2002; Sroufe, 1997; Thomas & Karmiloff-
Smith, 2002), so that by adulthood it may be impossible to apportion the causal influences
retrospectively (Rack, 1997).
This review acknowledges the association between low literacy attainment and social
exclusion, which has both cultural and physiological dimensions and which will characterise
the majority of students in adult literacy classes, including most of those who may be
identified—however questionably—as ‘dyslexic’ on the widely used assessment criteria
published by the Basic Skills Agency (Klein, 1993). It might well be that ‘the key to treating