Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T18:01:14.632Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 1 - Introductory Chapter

Dyslexia in Adult Students

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2021

Amanda T. Abbott-Jones
Affiliation:
Independent Dyslexia Consultants, London
Get access

Summary

The chapter looks at definitions of dyslexia and argues that definitions confined to reading deficits are limited for understanding the complex range of difficulties faced by the adult student at university. As such, definitions provided by the Rose Report (2009), and the British Dyslexia Association (2007) describing core characteristics of dyslexia and co-occurring difficulties are presented as more appropriate for comprehending the spectrum nature of dyslexia. The chapter also draws attention to Elliott and Grigorenko’s (2014) claim that dyslexia does not exist. This is dismissed by arguing that their concept of dyslexia is perceived as a reading disability in school-aged children and is not applicable to understanding adult dyslexia. The refutation of Elliott and Grigorenko is reinforced by outlining evidence of the existence of dyslexia from empirical work on causal theories. It is suggested, however, that causal theories looking for a single deficit are less suitable for characterising adult dyslexia than models such as Pennington’s multiple deficit model. Finally, a picture is provided of adult dyslexia by considering ways various causal theories manifest in different subgroups of students with dyslexia. Types of academic areas affected by these various deficits are also specified.

Type
Chapter
Information
Dyslexia in Higher Education
Anxiety and Coping Skills
, pp. 1 - 28
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Boada, R. & Pennington, B. (2006). Deficient implicit phonological representations in children with dyslexia. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 95(3), 153193.Google Scholar
Bradley, L. & Bryant, P. E. (1978). Difficulties in auditory organisation as a possible cause of reading backwardness. Nature, 271(5647), 746747.Google Scholar
British Dyslexia Association (www.bdadyslexia.org.uk, 2007).Google Scholar
British Psychological Society (www.bps.org.uk/, 1999).Google Scholar
Denckla, M. B. & Rudel, R. G. (1976). Rapid automatised naming: dyslexia differentiated from other learning disabilities. Neuropsychologia, 14(4), 471479.Google Scholar
Elliott, J. G. & Gibb, S. (2008). Does dyslexia exist? Journal of Philosophy of Education, 42(3–4), 475491.Google Scholar
Elliott, J. G. & Grigorenko, E. L. (2014). The Dyslexia Debate. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Fawcett, A. J., Nicolson, R. I. & Dean, P. (1996) Impaired performance of children with dyslexia on a range of cerebellar tasks. Annals of Dyslexia, 46(1), 259283.Google Scholar
Francisco, A. A., Jesse, A., Groen, M. A. & McQueen, J. M. (2017). A general audiovisual temporal processing deficit in adult readers with dyslexia. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 60(1), 144158.Google Scholar
Frith, U. (2002). Resolving the paradoxes of dyslexia. In Reid, G. & Wearmouth, J. (eds.), Dyslexia and Literacy: Theory and Practice (pp. 4568). Chichester: John Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
Glickstein, M., Stein, J. & King, R. (1972). Visual input to the pontine nuclei. Science, 178(4065), 11101111.Google Scholar
Goswami, U., Power, A., Lallier, M. & Facoetti, A. (2014). Oscillatory ‘temporal sampling’ and developmental dyslexia: toward an over-arching theoretical framework. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8(904), 13.Google Scholar
Grant, D. (2010). That’s the Way I Think: Dyslexia, Dyspraxia and ADHD Explained, 2nd ed. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Grigorenko, E. L. (2001). Developmental dyslexia: an update on genes, brains, and environments. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 42(1), 91125.Google Scholar
Hall, J. W., Wilson, K. P., Humphreys, M. S., Tinzmann, M. B. & Bowyer, P. M. (1983). Phonemic-similarity effects in good vs. poor readers. Memory and Cognition, 11(5), 520527.Google Scholar
Helland, T. (2007). Dyslexia at a behavioural and a cognitive level. Dyslexia, 13(1), 2541.Google Scholar
Hollants-Gilhuijs, M., Spekreijse, F., Gijsberti-Hodenpijl, M., Karten, Y. & Spekreijse, H. (1998). Visual half-field contrast sensitivity in children with dyslexia. Documenta Ophthalmologica, 96(4), 293303.Google Scholar
Hulme, C. & Snowling, M. J. (2009). Developmental Disorders of Language, Learning and Cognition. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Hynd, G. W. & Cohen, M. (1983). Dyslexia. Neuropsychological Theory, Research, and Clinical Differentiation. New York: Stratton.Google Scholar
Johnston, R. S., Rugg, M. D. & Scott, T. (1987). The influence of phonology on good and poor readers when reading for meaning. Journal of Memory and Language, 26(1), 5768.Google Scholar
Kubová, Z., Kuba, M., Kremláček, J., Langrová, J., Szanyi, J., Vít, F. & Chutná, M. (2015). Comparison of visual information processing in school-age dyslexics and normal readers via motion-onset visual evoked potentials. Vision Research, 111 (Pt A), 97104.Google Scholar
Livingstone, M. S., Rosen, G. D., Drislane, F. W. & Galaburda, A. M. (1991). Physiological and anatomical evidence for a magnocellular defect in developmental dyslexia. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 88(18), 79437947.Google Scholar
Lovegrove, W., Bowling, A., Badcock, D. & Blackwood, M. (1980). Specific reading disability: differences in contrast sensitivity as a function of spatial frequency. Science, 210(4468), 439440.Google Scholar
McAnally, K. I. & Stein, J. F., (1996). Auditory temporal coding in dyslexia. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences, 263(1373), 961965.Google Scholar
McArthur, G. M. & Bishop, D. V. (2001). Auditory perceptual processing in people with reading and oral language impairments: current issues and recommendations. Dyslexia, 7(3), 150170.Google Scholar
McDougall, S., Hulme, C., Ellis, A. W. & Monk, A. (1994). Learning to read: the role of short-term memory and phonological skills. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 58(1), 112123.Google Scholar
McLoughlin, D., Leather, C. & Stringer, P. (2002). The Adult Dyslexic: Interventions & Outcomes. London: Whurr.Google Scholar
Mody, M., Studdert-Kennedy, M. & Brady, S. (1997). Speech perception deficits in poor readers: auditory processing or phonological coding? Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 64(2), 199231.Google Scholar
Mortimore, T. & Crozier, W. R. (2006). Dyslexia and difficulties with study skills in higher education, Studies in Higher Education, 13(2), 235251.Google Scholar
Nicolson, R. I., Fawcett, A. J. & Dean, P. (2001). Developmental dyslexia: the cerebellar deficit hypothesis. Trends in Neurological Sciences, 24(9), 508511.Google Scholar
Nicolson, R. I., Fawcett, A. J. & Dean, P. (1996). Time estimation deficits in developmental dyslexia: evidence of cerebellar involvement. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences, 259(1354), 4347.Google Scholar
Pennington, B. F. (2006). From single to multiple deficit models of developmental disorders. Cognition, 101(2), 385413.Google Scholar
Pennington, B. F., Santerre-Lemon, L., Rosenberg, J., McDonald, B., Boada, R., Friend, A., Leopold, D. R., Samuelsson, S., Byrne, B., Willcutt, E. G. et al. (2012). Individual prediction of dyslexia by single versus multiple deficit models. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 121(1), 212224.Google Scholar
Ramus, F. & Szenkovits, G. (2008). What phonological deficit? Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 61(1), 129141.Google Scholar
Ramus, F., Rosen, S., Dakin, S. C., Day, B. L., Castellote, J. M., White, S. & Frith, U. (2003). Theories of developmental dyslexia: insights from a multiple case study of dyslexic adults. Brain, 126(4), 841865.Google Scholar
Reid, A., Szczerbinski, M., Iskierka-Kasperek, E. & Hansen, P. (2006). Cognitive profiles of adult developmental dyslexics: theoretical implications. Dyslexia, 13(1), 124.Google Scholar
Reiss, M. & Brooks, G. (2004). Developmental Dyslexia in Adults: A Research Review (May 2004). London: National Research Development Centre for Adult Literacy Numeracy, Institute of Education, University of London.Google Scholar
Rose, J. (2009). Identifying and Teaching Children and Young People with Dyslexia and Literacy Difficulties: An Independent Report. London: Department for Children, Schools and Families.Google Scholar
Scarborough, H. S. (1990). Very early language deficits in dyslexic children. Child Development, 61(6), 17281743.Google Scholar
Schulte-Körne, G. & Bruder, J. (2010). Clinical neurophysiology of visual and auditory processing in dyslexia: a review. Clinical Neurophysiology, 121(11), 17941809.Google Scholar
Schulte-Körne, G., Bartling, J., Deimel, W. & Remschmidt, H. (2004). Visual evoked potentials elicited by coherently moving dots in dyslexic children. Neuroscience Letters, 357(3), 207210.Google Scholar
Seidenberg, M. S. & McClelland, J. (1989). A distributed, developmental model of word recognition. Psychological Review, 96(4), 523568.Google Scholar
Skottun, B. C. (2014). A few observations on linking VEP responses to the magno- and parvocellular systems by way of contrast-response functions. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 91(3), 147154.Google Scholar
Snowling, M. J. (1981). Phonemic deficits in developmental dyslexia. Psychological Research, 43(2), 219234.Google Scholar
Snowling, M. J. (2000). Dyslexia, 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Snowling, M. J., Gallagher, A. & Frith, U. (2003). Family risk of dyslexia is continuous: individual differences in the precursors of reading skill. Child Development, 74(2), 358373.Google Scholar
Snowling, M. J., Goulandris, N., Bowlby, M. & Howell, P. (1986). Segmentation and speech perception in normal and dyslexic readers. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 41, 489507.Google Scholar
Snowling, M. J., Van Wagtendonk, B. & Stafford, C. (1988). Object-naming deficits in developmental dyslexia. Journal of Research in Reading, 11(2), 6785.Google Scholar
Stanovich, K. E. (1994). Annotation: does dyslexia exist? Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 55(4), 579595.Google Scholar
Stein, J. (1993). Dyslexia – impaired temporal information processing? Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 682, 8386.Google Scholar
Stein, J. (2018). Does dyslexia exist? Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 33(3), 313320.Google Scholar
Swanson, H. L. & Ramalgia, J. M. (1992). The relationship between phonological codes on memory and spelling tasks for students with and without learning disabilities. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 26(6), 296407.Google Scholar
Tallal, P. (1980). Auditory-temporal perception, phonics and reading disabilities in children. Brain and Language, 9(2), 182198.Google Scholar
Vellutino, F., (2014). Foreword. In Elliott, J. & Grigorenko, E. L. (eds.), The Dyslexia Debate (pp. xiiixvii). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Vellutino, F. R., Fletcher, J. M., Snowling, M. J. & Scanlon, D. M. (2004). Specific reading disability (dyslexia): what have we learned in the past four decades? Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 45(1), 240.Google Scholar
Wechsler, D. (2008a). Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale – Fourth Edition. San Antonio, TX: Pearson.Google Scholar
Yamamoto, H., Kita, Y., Kobayashi, T., Yamazaki, H., Kaga, M., Hitoshi, H., … Inagaki, M. (2013). Deficits in magnocellular pathway in developmental dyslexia: a functional magnetic resonance imaging-electroencephalography study. Journal of Behavioral and Brain Science, 3(2), 168178.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×