Before examining the problems of poor readers it would be useful to specify more precisely the group of children we are focussing on. As we mentioned earlier, there is some controversy surrounding the use of the term “dyslexia” as a term used to describe a particular group of poor readers. We will be examining a broader group of poor readers than this, but let us first examine the term dyslexia more closely.
1. WHAT IS DYSLEXIA?
A dyslexic child is generally regarded as a child who has substantial difficulties in learning to read, but does not have these difficulties in reading because of his social background, problems with hearing or eyesight or due to low intelligence. In other words, a child is considered to be dyslexic after possible causes of reading disability involving his environment or obvious physical or intellectual defects have been discounted.
What tends to cause confusion about the term is that a child may be a poor reader, but not be classified as being dyslexic as such. In Britain, for example, if one were to visit any primary school which was mainly composed of children of parents of low socio-economic status, there would probably be a substantial number of children in that school who could not read or only read a few words. But by the way dyslexia is defined these children would not be considered by researchers to be dyslexic. Instead, they would be classified as retarded readers due to a home environment which may be impoverished for a variety of reasons. The parents may possibly be unable to read very well, the language used in the home might be entirely different from that encountered in the child’s reading primers, the parents may never be seen reading so there is no model for the child to imitate, and so on. By contrast, in a school servicing a middle-class catchment area, there will hardly be any child who will be unable to read; but those who are unable to read might well be classified as dyslexic, provided that in other respects, such as in intelligence, they are otherwise normal. Of course, amongst working-class children who are poor readers there will also be a much smaller proportion of children who to all intents and purposes will be dyslexic. If the “dyslexics” had been brought up in a better socio-economic environment, they would still be unable to read.
Many investigators are intent on keeping to the narrow definition of dyslexia as outlined and doing research into the causes of the problem. While it is very important from the view of making progress in the field always to use groups defined by exactly the same criteria, there are others who would argue that from a pragmatic viewpoint there are many more retarded readers (e.g. working-class children of normal intelligence with reading problems) who deserve to be studied as well (e.g. Benton, 1978; Rutter, 1978). Nevertheless, according to Pavlidis (1981), there is some recent evidence that the two groups (that is, dyslexics vs working-class retarded readers of roughly average intelligence) can be clearly differentiated experimentally in terms of the nature of their eye movements. However, Stanley, Smith and Howell (1983) failed to find a difference in eye movements between a group of dyslexics and a control group of normal readers matched on age and non-verbal intelligence.
If a researcher wants specifically a sample of dyslexic children, this is what he would do in practice (based on Vellutino, 1979). Teachers from a number of schools would be asked to supply names of any children who are severely retarded in reading. As a first step these children are given a reading test and those more than two years below their reading grade at school would be selected. For instance in the USA this would be done for children in grade 3 or higher (ie. 8 years old or over). For grade 2 children the criterion would be adjusted to be at least one year behind and first graders would not be used. Obviously, in grade 1 (6 to 7-year-olds) the children are only beginning to read so the apparent differences between individual readers will be relatively small and perhaps temporary. In a typical sample for grade 3, the average retarded reader would be equivalent in reading to normal children roughly two-thirds of the way through grade 1 and by grade 6 he or she would be equivalent to normal children roughly less than half way through grade 3.
The rest of the criteria are not based directly on reading performance. The children are then given the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) devised by Wechsler (1949). This is the most commonly used intelligence test for children and is composed of a number of subtests. It has two main parts consisting of a verbal test and a performance or nonverbal test. Only those who have an intelligence quotient (IQ) over 90 (the average score of children taking into account their age is 100) on either the verbal or performance scale would qualify as dyslexic. Thus, children who are dyslexic have problems in reading on grounds other than those based on intelligence.
Other grounds for exclusion would be: problems in acuity of sight or hearing, problems of gross neurological and physical disabilities, maladjusted children (i.e. those with a behavioural disorder) and finally, children would be excluded who were attending schools not within a suburban or middle-class area. Having employed all these exclusionary criteria, the typical researcher is left with a residue of children who would be classified as “probably dyslexic”. The general characteristics of this sample would probably be: that on average for every four boys in the sample there would only be one girl? they would have difficulties with such things as telling the time, naming the months and days of the week etc., perceiving spatial relationships including having difficulty distinguishing left from right; some might have minor signs of neurological impairment such as having abnormal reflexes (Vellutino, 1979).
Having given a generally accepted definition of dyslexia it is only fair to point out that the term itself is subject to much criticism. For instance, in the Bulletin of the British Psychological Society an article by Whittaker (1982), critical of the term “dyslexia” and calling those who used it “flat-earthers”, provoked a flurry of subsequent correspondence ranging from the light-hearted to the more serious. One correspondent wrote about the etymology of the actual word “dyslexia” as follows: ‘The Greek roots are simply “dys” (=“bad”) and “lexis” (=word). Dyslexia is a bad word. That is all there is to it’. More seriously, Whittaker in her article condemned the labelling of a child as dyslexic on the grounds that it erroneously suggests that it is a medical condition. Therefore it would be the responsibility of the medical profession rather than of psychologists which in turn implies some form of medically-based treatment. She also discusses how various researchers have tried to widen the term to include deficits in such skills as arithmetic (Miles, 1978) and language skills (the World Federation of Neurology in 1968).
Certainly, dyslexic children have problems in these areas? for instance, Thomson and Grant (1979) noted that on the WISC subtest of Arithmetic, dyslexic children performed poorly relative to normal children. But it seems to make the term “dyslexic” rather loose if it includes children with deficits in other areas, if this implies that they need not necessarily be deficient in reading to be classified as dyslexic. However, one can sympathise with the view that each dyslexic child demonstrates deficiences in most but not necessarily all of a particular cluster of skills. The skill of reading is just one of the cluster of skills which are causing problems and is not necessarily the fundamental one from which the others emanate. Perhaps part of the motivation for such criticisms of dyslexia by Whittaker is that instead of pouring money into special clinics treating dyslexia, she considers that more resources should be made available for remedial help in State schools.
Similarly, the Advisory Committee on Handicapped Children produced a report (the Tizard Report, 1972) on children with specific reading difficulties. It argued that a danger was that the narrowness of the term “specific developmental dyslexia” meant that resources could concentrate on this relatively small group of children to the detriment of those with difficulties in other skills, but not classified as dyslexic. Instead they recommended that the term “specific reading difficulties” should be used for this small group of children and that the needs of these children should be catered for within the context of the general problem of reading retardation of whatever kind. In other words, remedial education, using remedial teachers in each school, should be the vehicle with which to tackle the general problem of reading and the specific problem of those classified as having “specific reading difficulties”. They recommended that in practice most retarded readers should receive remedial help within the context of the ordinary school, be it at primary or secondary level. Otherwise they could be deprived of contact with normal children, particularly as the general development of language is more likely to be stimulated in such a context, which in turn would enhance their reading. The Advisory Committee went on to acknowledge that “a very small proportion” of reading disadvantaged children with severe problems will need to be temporarily withdrawn from their regular school in order to attend a Remedial Education Centre.
Over a decade later it does not seem that the level of support for the backward reader is sufficient under the present financial stringency. One headmaster of a school I visited, which contained a special unit, recently claimed that he had only ten pounds for each child in his school for the w...
