Dyslexia and English Orthography was "surprise"

[ronbutters at AOL.COM]

At best, then, changing English spelling would at best make reading easier for a small number of persons with a predisposition to dislexia. Scarcely a reason for attempting the virtually imposible task of revising the spelling system. Furthermore, unless the study takes into account the quite different dialect situations in Italy as opposed to that of the English-speaking world, the article is meaningless for the purposes to which TZ attempts to put it. And which dialect of English should be the basis for spelling reform? 



But how like him to ignore the evidence and cling tenaciously to an irrelevant statistic in support of an impossible course of action.


-----Original Message-----
From: Gordon, Matthew J. <GordonMJ at MISSOURI.EDU>
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Sent: Thu, 19 Feb 2009 8:35 am
Subject: [ADS-L] Dyslexia and English Orthography was "surprise"








We've been down this road with Tom before. In Oct. of 2006 he was trying to gain 
support for his spelling reforms by citing research that had, he reported, found 
dyslexia more common among English speakers due to our writing system. Here's 
what I replied at the time:

Date:         Mon, 2 Oct 2006 22:15:20 -0500
From:         "Gordon, Matthew J." <[log in to unmask]>
Subject:      Re: spelling pronunciation exercises

This is not my area by any stretch so I had a look at the article you reference, 
which I think is:
Paulescu et al. 2001. Dyslexia: Cultural diversity and biological unity. 
Science, 291: 216
5-7.

I gather your claim that "50% of dyslexia is 'caused' by the mismatch of letters 
and sounds" is based on the observation that dyslexia is diagnosed at roughly 
twice the rate in Italy than in the US. This statistic says nothing about the 
causes of dyslexia. In fact, the paper is pretty unequivocal in noting that 
there is no differences between Italian, French, and English dyslexics at a 
neurological level. Here's what the researchers conclude:

"Is dyslexia a disorder with a universal neuro-anatomical basis, or is it a 
different disorder in shallow and deep orthographies? Our results are clear-cut. 
They show that dyslexia has a universal basis in the brain and can be 
characterized by the same neurocognitive deficit. Clearly, the manifestation in 
reading behavior is less severe in a shallow orthography [e.g. Italian]. 
However, our results show that if more sensitive tests were available, the 
neurocognitive deficit would be detected. Although Italian dyslexics read more 
accurately than French or English dyslexics, they showed the same degree of 
impairment on reading latencies and reading-related phonological tasks relative 
to their controls. We conclude that a phonological processing deficit is a 
universal problem in dyslexia and causes literacy problems in both shallow and 
deep orthographies. However, in languages with shallow orthography, such as 
Italian, the impact is less, and dyslexia has a more hidden existence. By 
contrast, deep orthographies like that of English and French may aggrav
ate the 
literacy impairments of otherwise mild cases of dyslexia."

So it seems that changing the orthography of English wouldn't decrease the 
number of dyslexics though it might just keep more of them in the closet.



-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society on behalf of RonButters at AOL.COM
Sent: Thu 2/19/2009 7:12 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject:      Re:       Re: [ADS-L] Surprise
 
In a message dated 2/18/09 9:48:06 PM, truespel at HOTMAIL.COM writes:


> There are twice as many dislectic English speakers as Italian speakers.
>

Source?


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