Even though I had been studying reading problems in children for a number of years as a means of understanding cognitive processes, I became deeply committed to the study of developmental dyslexia after my encounter with S. H. , a dyslexic college student. Until then, dyslexia to me remained an interesting phenomenon but somewhat removed from the mainstream of my research interests. The facts that, in spite of his superior IQ, S. H. could read no better than a child in the fifth grade and misspelled even common words such as was and here, however, took me by surprise and made me appreciate the intriguing and challenging nature of developmental dyslexia. This led to a series of studies of college students with reading disability, a group that is relatively unexplored. The general plan of these investigations was to study a small number of disabled readers at any given time, rather intensively. Even though this approach limits the generalizability of the research findings, it lays bare some of the most interesting facts about dyslexia which are obscured in large-scale statistical studies. These studies have now extended well over a decade and are still continuing. As soon as these studies were started, it became obvious that not all reading-disabled college students are alike and that disabled readers could be classified into three broad categories: those with poor decod ing skill, those with poor comprehension ability, and those with a combination of these two deficits.

This book discusses the theoretical rationale for the research on reading and writing from a developmental neuropsychological perspective. It reviews current research on the structural and functional development of the brain with respect to reading and writing acquisition.

Neuropsychology of Language, Reading, and Spelling explores the many neural systems and subsystems that contribute to the production and comprehension of oral and written language. This book is organized into five parts encompassing 12 chapters that emerged from the 1980 International Conference on the Neuropsychology of Language, Reading, and Spelling, sponsored by the Program in Neurosciences and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. This conference highlights the neurological and behavioral interrelatedness of language, reading, and spelling. After briefly dealing with the cognitive and language development, as well as learning to read and to spell as instances of acquiring skill, this book goes on discussing the activity of the learner in the development skill, the influence of interacting forces in the developing nervous systems, and the role of peripheral mechanisms in the development of speech and language. A chapter examines the central integrative mechanisms, specifically the electrophysiological research with infants on the dependence of language perception on multidimensional, complexes processes, and not solely as a left- or right-hemisphere task. This chapter also provides evidence of discrete localization of language processes within the dominant hemisphere at both cortical and subcortical levels. The final four chapters are devoted to an analysis of developmental disorders from the varied perspectives of neurology, linguistics, neuropsychology, and education. This book will be of value to neuropsychologists and developmental biologists.

Each chapter represents a personal account of a reading disorder through which details of the features of the disorder, methods used for testing, and theoretical accounts are illustrated. Controversies are explained, theories evaluated and anomalies pointed out. From this emerges a picture of the central properties of each disorder and the contribution of each to our understanding of the reading system as a whole. However, the picture is not complete: loose threads tantalise, some findings are hard to explain, and some newly controversial theories are put forward. The intention is to provide information that will help to equip the reader with the knowledge and expertise necessary to take the study of these reading disorders forward.

In this volume leading researchers review what is currently known about both normal and impaired development of decoding, comprehension and spelling skills and discuss effective remedial strategies.