Strengths That May Accompany Dyslexia

From the Marshall Memo #430

In this New York Times article, author Annie Murphy Paul cites studies showing that many people with dyslexia have distinctive perceptual abilities, including better peripheral vision. When shown a row of letters, typical readers see the letters in the center most accurately, but dyslexics are better at reading the outermost letters. This may be why people with dyslexia have problems with reading but rapidly take in the scene as a whole, absorbing the “visual gist.” 

In another experiment, people were asked to look at Escher-type drawings. Most people look closely at the details and find the drawings plausible at first, but dyslexics take in the whole picture and realize more quickly that the scene is impossible – for example, staircases lead nowhere and a fountain is flowing up rather than down. 

“The compelling implication of this finding is that dyslexia should not be characterized only by deficit, but also by talent,” says Catya von Karolyi of the University of Wisconsin. This may explain why, although dyslexics are represented in every profession, they are much more common in fields like art and design that require visual perception – and also in technical fields that involve seeing patterns in large amounts of data. 

“Whatever special abilities dyslexia may bestow,” concludes Paul, “difficulty with reading still imposes a handicap. Glib talk about appreciating dyslexia as a ‘gift’ is unhelpful at best and patronizing at worst. But identifying the distinctive aptitudes of those with dyslexia will permit us to understand this condition more completely, and perhaps orient their education in a direction that not only remediates weaknesses, but builds on strengths.” 

“The Upside of Dyslexia” by Annie Murphy Paul in The New York Times, Feb. 5, 2012 (p. 5), 

http://nyti.ms/HaCytU