Do you have special mental capacities that likely are not enjoyed by 80% of the people around you? Are you among the one in five who, according to cognitive neuroscience, are neurobiologically wired with cognitive processing gifts? You are if you are dyslexic. Maybe it’s time to celebrate.
A movement based on theory and research with tremors stretching back decades but now shaking up our understanding posits dyslexia as a biological mental advantage benefiting mankind’s past and future (Taylor & Vestergaard, 2024, second edition). It’s a view that can transform a dyslexic individual from feeling inadequacy, failure, and shame to being self-driven, confident, motivated, and successful. The shift can be from feeling stupid and embarrassed to understanding how dyslexia may play tricks on one’s brain but also account for how a different way of thinking from non-dyslexics has cognitive benefits.
For decades, the major thrust of research, treatment, understanding, and education of dyslexic people, especially in schools, has focused on difficulties with reading and spelling, accompanied by problems with visual and auditory processing, working memory, and processing difficulties. It is a deficit-driven theory focused on disorders. Yet today, a seismic shift is upending conventional wisdom and shaking the very foundation of deficit theory by shifting focus to dyslexic advantages.
Rather than focus solely on struggles in school, especially with reading and writing, or the practice of labeling students as learning disabled, this research is positioning dyslexia as a learning predisposition, or way of thinking and reasoning, with advantages to be celebrated. The crux of the shifting message champions focus on a student’s strength. One practical implication is for teachers and interventionists who work with a student who may have symptoms of dyslexia to carry a folder with the student’s strengths and, when working with the student, to........