Dyslexia and Skill: Theoretical Studies

It is a great honour to contribute to this Festschrift for Tim Miles. It is a great pleasure also in that Tim’s enthusiasm, guidance and openmindedness have been an inspiration to us in our research. In this chapter we present the results of a recently-completed study which we believe is the most wide-ranging analysis of the skills of dyslexic children yet performed. Whilst confirming the phonological deficits which Tim and others were instrumental in discovering, we also found equal, and sometimes greater, deficits in other areas of skill. We believe that these results are of significance for the whole dyslexia community, emphasising the dangers of focusing on any single facet of dyslexia, and pointing the way towards a deeper understanding of the pattern of difficulties. We conclude with three ‘buzzes’, each a speculative account of a possible cause of dyslexia, at the cognitive level, the connectionist level and the neural level. It is unlikely that these ‘buzzes’ are completely correct, and they may indeed be completely wrong, but we offer them in the hope that they may inspire further workers to pursue research in this area.