Dyslexia and English Orthography was "surprise"

[Gordon, Matthew J.]

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: 2165-7.

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 aggravate 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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