For 1 in every 10 students, learning to read will be a far more difficult exercise than it should be. For a variety of reasons, literacy and learning to read, a skill unique to the human being, can take longer and/or seem impossible for many children who are plagued by a neurodevelopmental disorder known as dyslexia. For years, a diagnosis of dyslexia was often delayed until a student reached the primary grades and struggled to acquire the same grade-level reading skills as his or her peers.
Auditory and speech processing delays are a characteristically seen as a sign of dyslexia in earlier developmental stages. However, with the variety of other cognitive and learning disabilities plaguing our children these days, the dyslexic diagnosis is not always appropriate and, even if it is, it may often be delayed. This has been a continual problem for educators, parents, and researchers alike since it is firmly established that children diagnosed with dyslexia earlier in life are far more likely to overcome their learning disability quickly and keep pace with their peers once they are given the tools they need to thrive.
The Study
With this goal in mind, an Italian research team led by Andrea Facoetti from the University of Padua conducted a three year study of children in that country. The findings of Facoetti’s team point towards visual attention deficits, rather than language delays, as a more reliable predictor of dyslexia in pre-readers.
The study called “A Causal Link between Visual Spatial Attention and Reading Acquisition” was published online April 5 in Current Biology. The report goes over the research which looked at children from the pre-reading kindergarten age through second grade. The team discovered that a dyslexia diagnosis was far more likely among children with visual attention problems early on. As Facoetti explains, “This is a radical change to the theoretical framework explaining dyslexia. It forces us to rewrite what is known about the disorder and to change rehabilitation treatments in order to reduce its impact.”
Additional Findings
The report covers several aspects of the team’s study and ultimately makes several important conclusions about literacy and reading education in general. This includes the following:
- When they are pre-readers, poor readers will show impaired visual search and spatial cuing.
- When they are pre-readers, approximately 60% of poor readers display a visual-attention deficit.
- Preschoolers’ visual attention abilities predict future reading acquisition.
- For all students, efficient visual-attention is crucial in order to learn to read, independently of phonology.
Future Implications
Though certainly not as popular in the news media as autism or ADHD, dyslexia is a real problem in schools. With 10% of all students struggling with this disorder, accurately identifying the early warning signs can make a huge difference in each child’s ability to acquire reading skills and subsequently maintain grade-level. Though the findings of this study are still new, their implications for the future of literacy education among preschoolers is a major step in the right direction.
Andrea, the percentage of students with reading issues is much higher than 10%. For actual dyslexia IDA estimates 15%-20%. Another substantial fraction struggles with reading because of inadequate language development. (See interview with Todd Risley at Children of the Code http://www.childrenofthecode.org/interviews/risley.htm
I have a lot of questions about this study and would like to see it replicated in native English speakers (much more complicated orthography than Italian) before jumping on the “visual attention deficit” angle.
Liz,
I was only reporting on the information from the study itself. I do provide links in the article if you are interested in reading more. I would love to hear your input.
Nice article Andrea. Although Dyslexia may not be as “popular” yet in schools awareness is rapidly growing. People are starting to see the huge need out there. There are so many children who struggle with reading on a day to day basis and we need to find ways to help them.
Thanks JD,
The response from readers that this article has generated–very heated indeed–shows how important even mentioning dyslexia is in the special ed community.
I am not about to jump on the causal bandwagon for what is at best suggestive of being an associated factor. Perhaps I am just tired of dyslexia researchers acting as if all prior knowledge acquired about dyslexia is null and void because of a new study comes along . Seems like a new cause of dyslexia is found every year.
It also is in poor form to use a conclusion as the title of any scientific study. One clue to the questionable validity is that while no intervention has yet been developed for all dyslexics there are several interventions that are successful for a majority of dyslexics using NO visual training. Another clue is that vision therapy, colored lenses, eye doctors or anything related to vision doesn’t seem to be all that effective for a majority of dyslexics.
Having personally discussed the subject of dyslexia and vision with almost a thousand dyslexics , I believe that about 10% of dyslexics can be called visual dyslexics and have visual issues as a primary cause of reading difficulties. The majority of dyslexics will report having no visual issues for reading.
My niche is visual dyslexia . I sell universal visual dyslexia glasses called See Right Dyslexia Glasses. If I marketed my glasses to all dyslexics my failure rate would be so high I couldn’t offer a money back guarantee. The difference between dyslexics and visual dyslexics is easily determined by self evaluation. Visual dyslexics can describe their specific visual problems that make reading difficult while dyslexics will report they see the text just fine. See Right Dyslexia Glasses are effective at removing described visual problems that make reading difficult. Removing any and all described visual problems that make reading difficult is all my glasses do. That is all I claim they do.
I would suggest DR G Eden as a reliable source of information as she did the first fMRI brain studies on dyslexia and chose the visual centers of the brain as her first study. While at least one girl in the study said she could read if the words would just stop walking ( a described visual problem that made reading difficult ) further study revealed that the differences in other data did not support visual issues as being causal for reading difficulties of dyslexics in general.
I would be surprised if visual testing would be anywhere close to definitive in being able to identify dyslexia in young children ( it might be suggestive ) . Their inability to identify any language differences in their test subjects shows a lack of expertise concerning dyslexia when some trained individuals are very successful (80-90%) in just that using language and communication skills evaluations with no visual testing at all.
It is just not proper or scientific to throw out all previous dyslexia research to believe a study that has a conclusion in the title. I tend to believe data but only believe conclusions if they are supported by the data. I don’t think that is the case for this study.
Hi John,
Thank you for your insight. I think you make several valid points about the importance of looking at other angles of a disorder and the validity of any scientific study. I know that the response that this article has generated already is more than I expected when I published it. While I cannot speak to the validity of the study or other aspects of dyslexia–such as visual dyslexia–I welcome more talk in that regard. This is an important topic in our schools and among our students, we need to start a dialogue.