DSM 5 Approved, dyslexia out: What the experts thought

I'm waiting for official confirmation.  In the mean time, this report:

J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 2012 May;53(5):593-607. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-7610.2011.02495.x. Epub 2011 Dec 5.

Annual research review: the nature and classification of reading disorders--a commentary on proposals for DSM-5.

Snowling MJ, Hulme C.

Source

Department of Psychology, University of York, York, UK. [email protected]

Abstract

This article reviews our understanding of reading disorders in children and relates it to current proposals for their classification in DSM-5. There are two different, commonly occurring, forms of reading disorder in children which arise from different underlying language difficulties. Dyslexia (as defined in DSM-5), or decoding difficulty, refers to children who have difficulty in mastering the relationships between the spelling patterns of words and their pronunciations. These children typically read aloud inaccurately and slowly, and experience additional problems with spelling. Dyslexia appears to arise principally from a weakness in phonological (speech sound) skills, and there is good evidence that it can be ameliorated by systematic phonic teaching combined with phonological awareness training. The other major form of reading difficulty is reading comprehension impairment. These children read aloud accurately and fluently, but have difficulty understanding what they have read. Reading comprehension impairment appears to arise from weaknesses in a range of oral language skills including poor vocabulary knowledge, weak grammatical skills and difficulties in oral language comprehension. We suggest that the omission of reading comprehension impairment from DSM-5 is a serious one that should be remedied. Both dyslexia and reading comprehension impairment are dimensional in nature, and show strong continuities with other disorders of language. We argue that recognizing the continuities between reading and languagedisorders has important implications for assessment and treatment, and we note that the high rates of comorbidity between readingdisorders and other seemingly disparate disorders (including ADHD and motor disorders) raises important challenges for understanding these disorders.