Why Are Some Bilingual People Dyslexic in English but Not Their Other Language? - Neuroscience News

One, it would appear, is either born dyslexic or not.So, how then have we ended up with the phenomenon that some people who speak both English and another language can be dyslexic in one, but not the other?The answer, it seems, is hidden in the characteristics of a language and its writing system.“The English writing system is so irregular – print to sound or sound to print translation is not always one to one,” Brunel University London’s Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, Prof Taeko Wydell, recently told the BBC radio documentary Dyslexia: Language and childhood.“This irregularity or inconsistency makes it especially difficult for dyslexic individuals to master reading and writing in English.”So, for example, ‘mint,’ ‘lint’ and ‘hint’ – all ‘int’ words – are pronounced differently to the word ‘pint’. This helps the motor sequence – the combination of small movements required to write each word or sound – get ‘wired in’ to their brains.“So, when the child is asked to write later on, the child’s hands almost automatically write down the character from memory,” said Prof Wydell.See alsoFeaturedOpen Neuroscience ArticlesPsychology·September 18, 2020·5 min readNo Evidence for Link Between Depression and DietIt’s therefore possible for people who learn to read and write in Chinese or Japanese to have no idea they have dyslexia until they later begin to learn English and are forced into reading and writing in a totally different way.So low is the prevalence of diagnosed dyslexia in primary schools in Japan –  as low as 1.4% when writing with syllabic Kana characters and 6.9% when writing with Kanji characters – that it wasn’t until 2006 that Prof Wydell published STRAW-I, the first and only standardised and systematic screening test for identifying dyslexia in Japanese primary school children.By 2013, nearly 9000 organisations across Japan were using the test, and in 2014 Prof Wydell’s work was awarded 4* ‘world-leading’ status by the UK government’s Research Excellence Framework (REF).The test has since been extended, with the new standardized test – STRAW-R – now being suitable for children up to 15 years old, significantly increasing the chance that young people in Japan will receive a timely diagnosis for dyslexia and be able to access to the right support throughout their schooling.About this dyslexia research newsSource: Brunel UniversityCredit: Tim Pilgrim – Brunel UniversityImage: The image is credited to Brunel University.A majority of the 10% quoted above as unable to read are in fact instructional casualties.