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Dyslexia Poses Bigger Challenge For English Speakers
Dyslexia is a disorder that makes it difficult for a learning reader to connect verbal sounds with the letters or symbols that "spell" that sound. Although people in all cultures can have dyslexia, recent research indicates the reading disorder is particularly prevalent among people speaking English because of the complexity of that particular language.
Findings from a new study appearing in the journal Science shows that the rate of identified dyslexics in Italy is about half the rate found in England and suggests the difference most likely lies in the notable differences in the complexities of the languages of the two countries.
According to Dr. Uta Frith of the University College, London, and co-author of the study, an international team of researchers studied adult dyslexics in England, France and Italy. Using a technique that measures brain activity by tracking blood-flow changes, they conclusively established for the very first that dyslexia is neurologically universal across cultures.
The study also found that dyslexia can manifest in different ways depending on the regularity of the language's writing system. This may explain why dyslexia seems to be more prevalent in countries in which English is the primary language. The writing system for English is highly complex because of the many, many historical influences on the language--compared to Italy, for example, whose writing system is relatively simple through its direct derivation from Latin.
Complexities of the English Language
The English language has 40 distinct sounds-and there are more than 1,100 different ways to spell those sounds. For instance, some words can differ by as few as one letter--"mint" and "pint" or "tough" and "cough"--but the pronunciation is completely different. In a language such as Italian, there are no such ambiguities; there are 25 distinct sounds and they are all represented by precisely 33 letters or spellings.
For that reason, the study's researchers said, learning to read is much more difficult for English-speaking kids than for Italian-speaking children--and the French language falls somewhere in between. And so, when an Italian-speaking or French-speaking dyslexic learns to read, they struggle with far fewer variables than an English-speaking dyslexic is faced with deciphering.
How the Study Arrived at its Conclusions
The study involved 36 people with dyslexia and 36 without it. English, French and Italian dyslexics performed equally poorly in the short-term memory tests that involved speech sounds, with Italian dyslexics scoring the best in reading tests. However, in spite of the differences in test performance, when the researchers used a technique called positron emission tomography to track blood flow in the subjects' brains while they read printed material, it turned out that all the dyslexics experienced the same degree of reduced activation of their left temporal lobes during the reading tasks.
The researchers wrote: "Although Italian dyslexics read more accurately than French or English dyslexics, they showed the same degree of impairment" on imaging studies designed to identify reading impairment. "There may be," Frith added, "hidden cases of dyslexia in Italy because the simplicity of the language masks the condition. On the other hand, what would be deemed a mild case of dyslexia in many countries would most likely appear to be a far worse in English-speaking or French-speaking countries.
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