Q&A: The Unappreciated Benefits of Dyslexia | Wired Science | Wired.com.
Wired: What is your working definition of dyslexia?
Brock Eide: The generally accepted definition focuses on the difficulties with reading and spelling that are unexpected, given a child’s individual level of intelligence and their educational exposure. We think that definition is inadequate for practical use, because the actual symptoms vary a lot.
We’ll see dyslexic kids with a verbal IQ of 140 or 145 who will read with good comprehension, and as a consequence won’t be recognized as dyslexic. But they still read at fairly slow pace relative to other students in the gifted programs, and their performance will suffer from their slow reading speed. And for some dyslexic students, their problems with reading may be less than in other areas, like writing and rote or procedural mathematics, but they arise from the same wiring differences that underlie dyslexic reading and spelling challenges, and traditional definitions of dyslexia that focus entirely on word sound or language processing really don’t capture the breadth of these differences.
Wired: What are the major misconceptions surrounding the condition?
Fernette Eide: One of the biggest misconceptions is that dyslexic brains differ only in the ways they process printed symbols, when in reality they show an alternative pattern of processing that affects the way they process information across the board. Dyslexic brains are organized in a way that maximizes strength in making big picture connections at the expense of weaknesses in processing fine details.
It’s a huge mistake to regard a dyslexic child as if his or her brain is trying to follow the same pathway of development as all the other kids but is simply doing a bad job of it. In reality, the brains of kids with dyslexic processing styles are actually developing in a very different way. They establish a different pattern of connections and circuitry, creating a different kind of problem solving apparatus. The difference is global, not just in certain areas of the brain.
Dyslexic brains are organized in a way that maximizes strength in making big picture connections at the expense of weaknesses in processing fine details.
Interesting.
I **think** that's the opposite of autism.
Posted by: Catherine | Tuesday, January 03, 2012 at 04:33 PM