Developmental dyslexia as developmental and linguistic variation: Editor's commentary

Annals of Dyslexia, 2002 by Leong, Che Kan

The 2002 Volume 52 of Annals of Dyslexia is the first I have edited since assuming the editorship in November, 2001. It is an honor and a privilege to be entrusted with such responsibility by the International Dyslexia Association (IDA). It is a challenge that I accept with a great deal of trepidation, but with the safe knowledge that the Journal, just as the other professional activities of IDA, is well supported by the President, the Board of Directors, the membership at large and our colleagues and friends in different parts of the world.

I am grateful to our many authors who have submitted papers for consideration for publication. Our Associate Editors Dr. Susan Brady and Dr. Virginia Mann, other members of the Editorial Advisory Board and ad hoc reviewers from related disciplines of neurosciences, experimental and child psychology, speech and language sciences and education in Europe, Scandinavia, Asia and North America, all have spent a great deal of time and effort in reviewing the submissions. It is most gratifying to read many times and in great details the rigorous research studies and theory-based practices of our colleagues; just as it is salutary to read the equally searching, insightful reports with concrete suggestions from our reviewers. This is what it should be in good science and in effective practice in the helping professions.

The present volume is the result of nearly twelve months' continuous work with the help of all the colleagues mentioned above and other people. The latter group includes the Executive Director and Directors of Publications on IDA staff and Lydia Wagner of Type Shoppe II. Without all the cooperative work the volume would not be what it is. To quote T.S. Eliot in Ash Wednesday "For what is done, not to be done again. May the judgment not be too heavy upon us." Having stated this, comments and suggestions from IDA members and the readership at large are welcome so as to make the Journal even stronger. In what follows, I will first comment briefly on the papers and will then sketch my vision for the Journal for the next several years.

PART I. LESSONS FROM PIONEERS: ORTON, GESCHWIND, AND RAWSON

As a field of scientific study and clinical practice, dyslexia is many-faceted, covering the neurosciences, psychology, language and education. It is well said by the late Margaret Byrd Rawson (1986, p. 180) that dyslexia refers to a "range of variable ability for language acquisition." This apt description of the concept of dyslexia echoes what Samuel Orton (1937) wrote so presciently some fifty years earlier that the "strephosymbolic child" usually shows entirely normal "visual element" (p. 78) but has severe reading disability especially in the recall of details of the word (p. 87) and with an almost "insuperable obstacle to spelling" (p. 84) in "variable handwriting" (p. 89). Rawson (1986) expanded on the language dimension to suggest "eulexic" at one end of the language continuum to being dyslexic at the other end. Some of these language dimensions are explicated in the papers in Part III. In the same insightful paper she went on to discuss the four-way analysis of the language problems of those individuals with dyslexia: individual differences being personal, diagnosis being clinical, treatment being educational and understanding being scientific.

Along with Samuel and June Orton, Rawson (1986, p. 185) reiterated the need for "structured, systematic, sequential, cumulative, thorough, multisensory, individualized, cognitive, and therapeutically-oriented" approaches to instruction and remediation. The structured, multisensory, cognitive and psycholinguistic approaches have been shown to be effective and are the bases of the papers in Part IV of this volume. The therapeutic orientation is designed to take into account the emotional and social consequences of being dyslexic. Furthermore, Rawson (1986, p. 185) asked whether there was a "chance" that preventive measures might start "with babies whose heredity and neonatal status suggest risk." As is clear from the research literature these fifteen and more years and from the research papers in Part II of this volume, there is a high probability that such preventive measures are possible and are well researched.

In a response to the Rawson paper, Galaburda (1986) paid tribute to her as a great teacher, all the more so because "she is herself a perpetual student" and that her lectures are "undeniably au courant" (p. 192). Galaburda further states that the underlying substrate of dyslexia represents a case of "developmental variation rather than a defect" and that the boundary between defect and variability may not be clear-cut (p. 195). These notions of linguistic and developmental variations find a clear exposition in a recent causal modeling framework of Frith (1999), involving biological, cognitive and behavioral levels. Frith explains that for a full understanding of dyslexia as a neuro-developmental disorder with a biological basis, we need to link all these three levels within a framework of cultural factors. Very recently, Nicolson (2002) develops the concept of "dyslexia ecosystem," in which he analyzes the challenges facing the dyslexia community with different perspectives and dyslexia researchers with different theories and agenda. His suggestions for sharing knowledge, avoiding all-or-none debates, gathering scientific evidence and working collaboratively across related disciplines and in different countries are very much the same kinds of mission that Margaret Rawson envisioned. For her prescient views, her indefatigable work with and for individuals with dyslexia, for her writing and her advice to this Journal, we can express only in a small measure our gratitude, respect and affection for this great teacher in our succinct In Memoriam on Margaret Rawson.