The Dyslexic Advantage Read online

  When Lindsey was young all her teachers called her slow. Although she worked desperately to learn to read and write, she was one of the last in her school class to master these skills. Recently Lindsey graduated from college, earning the top prize in her school’s highly competitive honors program. She’s now enrolled in a prestigious graduate program studying psychology.

  Pete’s elementary school teachers told his parents he was borderline mentally retarded and emotionally disturbed. They also told them that they couldn’t teach him to read or write. However, with intensive one-on-one instruction, Pete learned to read and write well enough not only to attend college but also to go on to law school. Pete eventually used his legal training to represent another individual with dyslexia before the Supreme Court, winning her case 9–0 and radically redefining the rights of students with special educational needs.

  Doug, Lindsey, and Pete are all dyslexic, and they’re also all exceptionally good at what they do. As we’ll show you in this book, these facts are neither contradictory nor coincidental. Instead, Doug, Lindsey, and Pete—and millions of individuals with dyslexia just like them—are good at what they do, not in spite of their dyslexic processing differences, but because of them.

  This claim usually provokes surprise and a flurry of questions: “Good because of their dyslexia? Isn’t dyslexia a learning disorder? How could a learning disorder make people good at anything?”

  The answer is, a learning disorder couldn’t—if it were only a learning disorder. But that’s just our point, and it’s the key message of this book. Dyslexia, or the dyslexic processing style, isn’t just a barrier to learning how to read and spell; it’s also a reflection of an entirely different pattern of brain organization and information processing—one that predisposes a person to important abilities along with the well-known challenges. This dual nature is what’s so amazing—and confusing—about dyslexia. It’s also why individuals with dyslexia can look so different depending upon the perspective from which we view them.

  Look first at individuals with dyslexia when they’re reading or spelling or performing certain other language or learning tasks. From this perspective they appear to have a learning disorder; and with respect to these tasks, they clearly do. Now look at these same individuals when they’re doing almost anything else—particularly the kinds of tasks they excel at and enjoy. From this new perspective they not only cease to look disabled but they often appear remarkably skilled or even specially advantaged.

  This apparent advantage isn’t just a trick of perception—as if their strengths seemed large only in contrast with their weaknesses. There’s actually a growing body of evidence supporting the existence of a dyslexic advantage. As we’ll discuss throughout this book, many studies have shown that the percentage of dyslexic professionals in fields such as engineering, art, and entrepreneurship is over twice the percentage of dyslexic individuals in the general population. Individuals with dyslexia are also among the most eminent and creative persons in a wide variety of fields, like entrepreneur Richard Branson, singer-songwriter John Lennon, paleontologist Jack Horner, financial services pioneer Charles Schwab, inventor Dean Kamen, architect Richard Rogers, attorney David Boies, novelist Vince Flynn, computer pioneer Bill Hewlett, actor Anthony Hopkins, painter Chuck Close, cell phone pioneer Craig McCaw, and filmmaker Bryan Singer.

  Importantly, the link between dyslexic processing and special abilities isn’t visible only among superachievers. You can prove this for yourself by performing a simple experiment. Next time you run across an unusually good designer, landscaper, mechanic, electrician, carpenter, plumber, radiologist, surgeon, orthodontist, small business owner, computer software or graphics designer, computer networker, photographer, artist, boat captain, airplane pilot, or skilled member of any of the dozens of “dyslexia-rich” fields we’ll discuss in this book, ask if that person or anyone in his or her immediate family is dyslexic or had trouble learning to read, write, or spell. We’ll bet you dollars for dimes that person will say yes—the connection is just that strong. In fact, many of the most important and perceptive experts in the field of dyslexia have remarked on the link they’ve seen between dyslexia and talent.

  Now, would these connections be possible if dyslexia were only a learning disorder? The answer, clearly, is no. So there must be two sides to dyslexia. While dyslexic processing clearly creates challenges with certain academic skills, these challenges are only one piece of a much larger picture. As we’ll describe throughout this book, dyslexic processing also predisposes individuals to important abilities in many mental functions, including:• three-dimensional spatial reasoning and mechanical ability

  • the ability to perceive relationships like analogies, metaphors, paradoxes, similarities, differences, implications, gaps, and imbalances

  • the ability to remember important personal experiences and to understand abstract information in terms of specific examples

  • the ability to perceive and take advantage of subtle patterns in complex and constantly shifting systems or data sets

  While the precise nature and extent of these abilities varies from person to person, there are enough similarities between these strengths to form a recognizably related set, which can legitimately be referred to as dyslexia-related abilities or a dyslexic advantage. Ultimately, that’s what this book is about: the remarkable abilities that individuals with dyslexia commonly possess—abilities that appear to arise from the same variations in brain structure, function, and development that give rise to dyslexic challenges with literacy, language, and learning.

  In this book we’ll argue for a radical revision of the concept of dyslexia: a “Copernican revolution” that places abilities rather than disabilities at the center of our ideas about what it means to be an individual with dyslexia. This shift in perspective should change not only our thinking about dyslexia but also the ways we educate, employ, and teach individuals with dyslexia to think and feel about themselves, their abilities, and their futures.

  Please understand that we’re not trying to downplay the hardships that individuals with dyslexia can experience or to minimize their need for early and intensive learning interventions. We are simply trying to expand the view of dyslexic processing so that it encompasses both the challenges that individuals with dyslexia face and the abilities they commonly demonstrate. This broadened perspective can be illustrated using the following analogy.

  A Tool Discovered

  Imagine you live on a remote island and you’ve never had contact with the people or products of the outside world. One morning as you walk along the beach you spy a shiny cylindrical tube half buried in the sand. You pick it up, clean it, and carefully examine it. With growing excitement you realize it’s a product of human design, but what it is, or what it’s for, you can’t immediately decide.

  As you inspect the tube you find that it’s roughly as long as your arm and as heavy as a fist-sized stone. It’s also gently tapered so that one circular end is nearly twice as wide as the other. As you turn the tube to inspect its large end, you notice that the light shines from it with special intensity. When you bring this end toward your eye, you discover that the light isn’t just bouncing off the tube’s end—it’s shining either from it or through it. You peer cautiously through this large end, and after a moment’s adjustment you begin to see a familiar yet marvelously transformed image: it’s a lovely, delicate miniature of the beach stretched out in front of you. With awe and astonishment you realize what you’ve discovered: a remarkable device for making things look small!

  Well, yes and no. . . .

  Like a telescope, the concept of dyslexia is a human invention; and like a telescope it can either expand and clarify our view of individuals who struggle to read and spell or, used “the wrong way around,” it can cause our view of these individuals to shrink. Unfortunately, this “diminishing effect” is just what we believe has happened with the way the concept of dyslexia has been used.

  How the
“Narrow View” Became the Primary View

  Surprisingly, given how common we now know dyslexia to be,1 the first clear description of an individual with dyslexia appeared in the medical literature just over a century ago. In 1896, British ophthalmologist W. Pringle Morgan described a fourteen-year-old boy named Percy, who despite receiving seven years of “the greatest efforts . . . to teach him to read,” could read and spell only at the most basic level, even though his schoolmasters believed he was “the smartest lad in the school.”2

  It was through this case that the concept of dyslexia was first developed: the idea that there exists a distinct group of individuals who—though clearly intelligent—learn and process certain kinds of information very differently from their nondyslexic peers. Historically, the processing features most commonly associated with dyslexia are difficulties with reading and spelling, though, as we’ll see later, other challenges with language and learning are also common in individuals with dyslexia.

  While the development of this concept has been tremendously useful, we believe its true worth has never been fully realized because, like the telescope in our example, one critical question has been overlooked: How should this “telescope” be used? Should it be used as a tool to narrow our view solely to literacy, language, and learning difficulties? Or should it be “turned around” so we can see all the learning and processing features of this amazing group of individuals: not just in literacy and language but across the whole range of their activities—strengths as well as challenges—and throughout their entire life span?

  Since this question has largely gone unasked, challenges with literacy, language, and other aspects of learning have remained the almost exclusive focus of dyslexia research and education. As a result, “dyslexia” has come to be seen as essentially synonymous with those challenges. This perspective is reflected in current definitions of dyslexia. In the United States, the most widely used definition was developed by the National Institute of Child Health and Development (NICHD) and subsequently adopted by the International Dyslexia Association (IDA). It reads:Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that is neurological in origin. It is characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities. These difficulties typically result from a deficit in the phonological component of language that is often unexpected in relation to other cognitive abilities and the provision of effective classroom instruction. Secondary consequences may include problems in reading comprehension and reduced reading experience that can impede growth of vocabulary and background knowledge.

  In the terms of our telescope analogy, this is clearly a “shrinking” perspective since it narrows our view of dyslexic processing to the challenges experienced by individuals with dyslexia, and it does nothing to expand our view of their skills or capacities. From this perspective, dyslexia is merely:• a learning disability

  • characterized by difficulties

  • resulting from deficits

  • that produce secondary consequences

  • and additional impediments

  No wonder people have such a negative view of dyslexia!

  But is there really any reason to believe that this definition tells us everything we need to know about individuals with dyslexia? In a word: no. Habit alone has led us to assume that the first use we discovered for this “telescope” is the only one, and habit alone keeps us from discovering other—and better—uses.

  Ultimately, we’ve recognized the phenomenon of dyslexia but missed its significance—like archaeologists who’ve discovered a vast and elaborately carved gate but become so engrossed in its study that we’ve failed to realize that a magnificent city must lie buried nearby. Because we first recognized dyslexia as a learning disorder rather than a learning or processing style, we’ve paid little attention to whether dyslexic processing might also create talents and abilities. However, as we’ll show you in the next chapter, the talents and benefits that are associated with dyslexic processing can be easily observed once we recognize that dyslexia can be viewed from two different perspectives.

  CHAPTER 2

  Dyslexia from Two Perspectives

  To demonstrate the enormous difference that results when dyslexia is viewed from these two different perspectives, we’d like to introduce you to a family we’ve been privileged to meet through our work.

  We first met Kristen when we spoke to a parents’ group about the challenges we often see in very bright children. After our presentation, Kristen introduced herself and told us about her son. Christopher was in third grade, and he’d recently shown very broad gaps in his performance on the different subtests used in IQ testing. While he’d scored well on tests measuring verbal and spatial reasoning, his performance was weaker on tests measuring processing speed and working memory (or “mental desk space,” which we’ll discuss later). Kristen wanted to know if we could tell her anything about children who show such a pattern.

  We told Kristen that we often see this pattern in bright young boys, whom we’ve affectionately dubbed our “young engineers.” Although many of these boys show strong interest in verbal subjects like history, mythology, fantasy literature, role-playing games (including game creation), reading or being read to, and even storytelling or creation of imaginary worlds, they typically show their keenest interest in spatial or mechanical activities like building, designing, art, inventing, electronics, computing, and science. We told her that many of these boys struggle with handwriting, written expression, spelling, and initially with reading (especially with oral reading fluency). Often these boys are persistently slow readers, and a smaller number show challenges with oral language expression, like word retrieval, or difficulty putting their thoughts into words. Many also have a clear family history of dyslexia or many relatives who’ve excelled as adults in occupations requiring spatial, mechanical, or higher mathematical skills.

  Kristen at first appeared surprised by our remarks—almost taken aback—and we wondered if we’d missed our mark. But as we finished, she slowly smiled and said, “Let me tell you about my family. . . .”

  One Dyslexic Family: The Narrow Perspective

  Kristen’s son, Christopher, showed his first dyslexia-related challenges quite early in development. Like many dyslexic children, he was slow to begin speaking (his first words came shortly after his second birthday) and slow to combine words into sentences. As a preschooler his speech was often unclear, and he struggled to find words to express his thoughts. He often subtly mispronounced words and confused similar-sounding words like polish and punish. Despite the fact that he could identify the numbers zero through ten before his second birthday, Christopher couldn’t learn his letters until he was almost five years old. In school, he was much slower learning to read and write than most of his classmates, and he also had great difficulty memorizing math facts, despite a strong grasp of number concepts and math reasoning.

  Christopher received special testing and was referred to several learning specialists who helped him with reading, handwriting, speech articulation, and word retrieval. He’s currently in fourth grade, and though his reading accuracy has improved, he still struggles with slow written work production, messy handwriting, and spelling.

  Kristen, too, showed many signs of dyslexia early in her life. She was very slow in learning to read, and according to her parents she still struggled with basic phonetic decoding as late as fourth grade. Like Christopher she also made frequent word substitutions (like peaches for pears), struggled to get her thoughts down in writing, and spelled very poorly. Kristen also had a weak memory for auditory or verbal sequences—like phone numbers or word spellings—and she struggled to master abstract verbal concepts that she couldn’t easily picture.

  Kristen recalled that during her early years in school she was often “incredibly bored” and “couldn’t stand desk work.” She found listening to lectures on abstract subjects especially difficult. For much of middle school and the early years o
f high school her grades were poor, and she came close to failing out. Then it finally hit her that time was flying by and that “if she wanted to get anywhere in life” she’d have to go to college; so she buckled down and was able to raise her grades sufficiently to get into a state university.

  Kristen initially planned to major in sociology or psychology—the subjects she found most interesting; but she quickly realized, “If I had to read or write for my degree, I wouldn’t make it through.” So instead she majored in interior design, and after earning her degree she went to work for a large design firm.

  Kristen’s father, James, doesn’t remember any unusual difficulties learning to read as an elementary student in the 1930s. However, throughout his life he’s shown a persistent discrepancy between his high intellectual ability and his difficulty learning from text, which is characteristic of individuals with partially compensated dyslexia. He’s always been a slow reader, has never read for pleasure, and according to his family was able to succeed in high school and college largely because his childhood sweetheart—and now wife of nearly sixty years—Barbara, helped him do the reading for his coursework. She still helps him with business-related reading.

  Handwriting, spelling, and written expression also troubled James throughout his education, and they’ve remained tough for him to this day. Kristen fondly recalls the time when she made an imaginary diner from a cardboard box and asked her father to help her spell restaurant above its door. He thought for a moment, then said, “You should call it a café instead—that’s a much nicer word.” James also had difficulty remembering math facts like the times tables (a problem he’s still never entirely overcome); remembering math equations and certain rules and procedures; taking notes during lectures; grasping verbal (and especially abstract verbal) concepts; mastering a foreign language; switching attention from one subject to another as required at school (despite good prolonged attention for his preferred activities); and feigning interest in almost everything they were trying to teach him in school, with the exception of his advanced science courses.