Dyslexia: Neuroanatomical/neurolinguistic perspectives.

Hynd, George W.; Hynd, Cynthia R.

DYSLEXIA HAS been and continues to be a controversial term describing a severe reading disability that is presumed to be of neurological origin. Researchers in reading base much of their criticism regarding dyslexia on seriously outdated views of the psychological and neurological literature. Much, if not all, of the recent research on dyslexia conducted by neuroscientists is ignored in favor of a simplistic view of this disorder. In response, two areas of concern regarding dyslexia are addressed in this article. First, a review of attempts to adequately define dyslexia is presented with a focus on recent efforts at developing a nosology of dyslexia. Second, the neurological basis of reading and severe reading failure is also discussed with an emphasis on validating evidence provided through brain-mapping procedures and cytoarchitectonic (postmortem) studies. Neurolinguistic investigations that relate deficient subprocesses in reading to neuropsychologically derived models of reading failure may provide further evidence as to important brain-behavior relations, It is argued that the application of the term dyslexia to severe reading failure of neurologic origin is appropriate since an adequate definition of this condition exists and concrete evidence is available attesting to the unique neurolinguistic and neuropsychological nature of the disorder.

DYSLEXIA; LANGUAGE disorders; READING disability; COMMUNICATIVE disorders; LEARNING disabilities; READING research; EDUCATION research; PSYCHOLOGY of reading; READING

Reading Research Quarterly (Wiley-Blackwell), 1984, Vol 19, Issue 4, p482

0034-0553

Academic Journal

10.2307/747919