Category: Dyslexia

The ability to put letters together and sound them out depends on the ability to represent the sounds in one’s own internal speech. This is why phonological coding is essentially concerned with how children can represent not only the sounds they hear, but also the sounds as they are associated with letters and words. We are not going to discuss in any detail the various aspects of how children perceive speech, how they do phonological coding, and, ultimately, how they produce spoken responses.

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Intelligence can be measured by tests. At the beginning of this century in Paris, Alfred Binet developed the first set of such tests to find out which children in school needed special attention. So, at the beginning, intelligence tests were mainly used to separate the dull children in school from the average or bright children so that they could receive special education; they were not meant to be free of cultural bias or academic content .

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There are many children who are intelligent but cannot read. We identify some of them as having dyslexia. Indeed, IQ, the popular indication of intelligence, does not predict dyslexia. Many children at all levels of IQ fail to learn to read adequately in spite of getting the same instruction in the classroom as their classmates. That some children with a normal IQ of 100 or better do not learn to read is evidence enough for saying that IQ is not very relevant when explaining or predicting reading disability.

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The PASS (Planning, Arousal-Attention, Simultaneous, Successive) cognitive processing model can be described as a modern theory.

It is concerned with information processing that is dynamic as opposed to static. It is based on Luria’s analyses of brain structures (Luria, 1966b, 1973). Luria was a Russian neuropsychologist and medical doctor who examined many patients suffering from brain damage. He worked for 50 years in this field and died in 1977.

Continue reading Dyslexia: The PASS Theory of Intelligence – An Alternative to IQ

Testing intelligence by standard tests has come under attack in the last 15 years. At least three criticisms of intelligence testing have been voiced. First, intelligence tests measure ability and give us an IQ score, but do not show the processes of thinking which determine that ability. Intelligence tests consist of problems to be solved and different persons may solve them by using different processes. One procedure of solving the problem ends in success, another procedure ends in failure.

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How do We Understand What We Understand?

It took reading specialists many years to realize that understanding what you read and reading itself require two different processes. There are children who can read but cannot understand, and there are children who cannot read well because of some problem with speech but who, nevertheless, can understand through silent reading.

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Many of us would ask whether we can find different types of children with reading disability. If we can, it will clean up the heterogeneous mess and allow us to understand the reading-disabled children’s difficulties in terms of the cognitive processing mode they use. For example, who belongs to the true dyslexic category? Who should we place in the so-called garden-variety category? Does everyone who has reading difficulties also show a distinct pattern of deficits in cognitive processing? What is the value of classification or subtyping in terms of cognitive processes?

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Why IQ may Predict Reading Ability

Why then is IQ widely believed to predict reading ability? Is it because IQ measures potential whereas reading ability is an achievement? It is argued that IQ, as potential, should be manifested or expressed in reading as in other behavior. But, let us note from the example of Wechsler testing that some test items are in fact tests of vocabulary and arithmetic, which are subjects taught in the schools. Even tests of general information are taught in social studies. It is not surprising, then, that we can predict from the IQ score of a child his/her reading, arithmetic, or general learning ability, and that we can reverse the prediction as well.

Continue reading Dyslexia: IQ is Irrelevant but Cognitive Processes are Relevant

Both listening and reading are involved in comprehension and are further summarized here. Reading may involve single words while comprehension usually involves a sentence, a paragraph, or an entire discourse. When we read, one of the first things we do is analyze the sequence of words in a phrase or sentence. The most commonly occurring phrases are noun phrases or verb phrases. An example of each might be:

Continue reading Dyslexia: First Analyze Words and Syntax, then Understand

Another element of understanding or comprehension lies beyond syntax. When I listen to someone talking and I understand what they say, do I go through the different steps of syntax analysis men*tioned above? Do I parse the sentence, determine the word class, and analyze punctuation? The answer is yes, but I do it very quickly and automatically without much effort or thinking. I also understand speech and written text by establishing many con*nections and linking the material to my knowledge.

Continue reading Dyslexia: Comprehension is Automatic Most of the Time