Lost for words

24 April 1999

“WHEN Michael first started school at the age of 5 his writing was appalling.
You could hardly read a thing he wrote,” says his mother. “He went from being a
reading and writing.”

Michael’s teachers simply thought he was taking a little longer than the
other children—that he’d catch up. It was three years before anyone
realised that he was dyslexic. Now, at the age of 18, Michael has the reading

Scientists want to know what causes this strange condition, and why it only
becomes apparent when a child reaches the classroom. Dyslexia shows up as a
poorer reading and writing ability than expected from the child’s intelligence.
But because there is so much natural variability in how fast children learn to
read and write, the condition is often not properly diagnosed. Some people still
consider dyslexia an excuse for not learning or being taught well, and there are
many children like Michael who have been unfairly labelled as slow learners.

People with dyslexia have no difficulty understanding the meaning of words,
recognising individual letter shapes, and seeing anything other than text. This
has led many scientists to say that dyslexia is caused by a specific problem
with the language centres in the brain. But momentum is gathering for a
completely different explanation.

John Stein of Oxford University, who specialises in vision, is the real
champion of this new theory. He says that …

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