Dyslexia

No sensible educator, academic, or medical professional would deny that there is an identifiable group of children who, despite apparent ability and opportunity, simply fail to learn to read. The labels under which this difficulty has manifested itself are many and varied, and include specific learning difficulty, specific reading disability, strephosymbolia and dyslexia. The following caveats notwithstanding, the term dyslexia is the one adopted in this article. The reason for this is that in the author's experience the term dyslexia generates at least some sort of understanding in the listener most people have some notion about what dyslexia is, i.e., that it is a problem with reading and/or spelling. Other terms, which have historically fallen in and out of favour, generally fail to produce the same degree of basic awareness. An individual with dyslexia demonstrates normal academic and social achievement in all other respects, but has inordinate difficulty learning to read. The most frequently used formal definition for dyslexia is that of the World Federation of Neurology: a disorder manifested by a difficulty in learning to read despite conventional instruction, adequate intelligence, and socio-cultural opportunity. It is dependent upon fundamental cognitive disabilities which are frequently of constitutional origin. See also Language