There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.
Abstract
Developmental dyslexia affects up to 10 per cent of the population and it is important
to understand its causes. It is widely assumed that phonological deficits, that is,
deficits in how words are sounded out, cause the reading difficulties in dyslexia.
However, there is emerging evidence that phonological problems and the reading impairment
both arise from poor visual (i.e., orthographic) coding. We argue that attentional
mechanisms controlled by the dorsal visual stream help in serial scanning of letters
and any deficits in this process will cause a cascade of effects, including impairments
in visual processing of graphemes, their translation into phonemes and the development
of phonemic awareness. This view of dyslexia localizes the core deficit within the
visual system and paves the way for new strategies for early diagnosis and treatment.
Copyright 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.