Publications

Some children have a very hard time learning to read. In spite of normal intelligence and no special hearing or vision problems, they still read very slowly and with many errors. These problems persist even after they become adults: their reading improves with practice but less than that of their peers. This persistent reading difficulty is called developmental dyslexia. It is still not clear what causes dyslexia, and in this article we describe findings from our lab and our interpretation regarding the basis of dyslexia. We found that people with dyslexia benefit less than people without dyslexia from repetition of sounds, and that they behave as if they are less familiar with common syllables and word structures. Using brain scanning equipment, we also found that brains of people with dyslexia “forget” sounds faster. This might be the reason that they do not benefit from repetition as much as people without dyslexia.