Dyslexia China

  诵读困难在中国

诵读困难在中国

Further information about dyslexia in China
will be found on our website Dyslexia China.

诵读困难在中国

Research into Dyslexia Among the Chinese 研究

Chinese- and English-speaking dyslexics have different neurological deficits, according to a study released Monday which suggests that dyslexia may be different brain disorders in the two cultures.
English speakers with the reading disability typically have functional abnormalities in posterior parts of the brain associated with reading and possibly less gray matter in these areas also.
In Chinese dyslexics, on the other hand, the functional and structural brain abnormalities related to reading correspond with the left middle frontal region of the brain, according to new research.

The new research is based on brain scans performed on 16 dyslexic Chinese speakers and 16 of their peers with normal reading ability during the course of a couple of tests.
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Dyslexia in Chinese - Thinking in Tongues 方言的思考

In alphabetic scripts, such as English, groups of letters correspond to the sounds made when the language is spoken. In Chinese text, however, meanings are conveyed by characters. These do not necessarily dictate the sounds of the words they comprise. Using magnetic resonance imaging, Wai Ting Siok of the University of Hong Kong and co-workers1 explored how this difference manifests itself in the brains of dyslexic Chinese-speaking children.

Scientists have long known that the troubles of English-speaking dyslexics arise from a deficiency in the temporoparietal region of the brain, which maps the shapes of letters to the sounds they represent. Siok and colleagues asked a group of 16 Chinese children, normal and dyslexic, to identify pairs of characters with similar sounds. In normal children this task induced intense activity in the left middle frontal gyrus, rather than the temporoparietal region. Dyslexic children showed no such activity.

The authors also observed a deficit in the left fusiform gyrus in dyslexic children when asked to identify fake characters. This region contains neural circuits that link visual symbols directly to meaning. The researchers conclude that dyslexia in speakers of Chinese and English arise from different biological causes.

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Dyslexia Has a Language Barrier 语言障碍

Alan's parents are English, but he was born and grew up in Japan. He would pass as a native speaker of either language. What brought Alan to the notice of Taeko Wydell, an expert on Japanese reading, and Brian Butterworth, was that he was severely dyslexic, but only in one language. In the other, he was probably in the top 10% of readers of his age.

Research by US and Chinese scientists challenges our interpretation of how it is possible to be dyslexic in one language but not another. It shows that readers of Chinese use a different part of their brains to readers of English.

The study, led by Li Hai Tan and reported in Nature, may unexpectedly tell us some key things about how dyslexia affects the brain. Brain functioning, and indeed structure, is moulded by experience. Learning a regular spelling system such as Italian creates differences in brain organisation compared to learning highly irregular English. Italian has 26 rules to learn, which takes about six months; English takes longer because there are many irregularities (and several hundred rules). In Chinese 3,500 characters are needed to read the equivalent of the Daily Mail and about 6,000 characters to read books.

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Minds at Risk 风险心里

Dyslexia is less common in Asia than in the USA, but it is still a big and laregely unnoticed problem.

The term dyslexia was coined in 1888, but it didn't become commonly used in the West for more than five decades. In Asia, it has taken even longer, although the learning disability's effects were hardly unknown. "There was always some uncle or aunt in the family who was normal and intelligent in every other way except academics," says Dhanalakshmi Ayyer, a native of Madras, India. "Uncle or Aunt was branded as a little stupid or absent minded. I had one in my family."

In 1987, Ayyer discovered she had another: her son Sripathi. Ayyer's long fight to get help for her son is a tale echoed throughout a region just waking up to the reality of dyslexia. In the whole of China, for example, there are no special schools for dyslexics. Ayyer's native India is thought to have tens of millions of people with dyslexia, yet the government doesn't spend any money on it. Still, the fact that her son did get help and is now, at age 17, doing well in a mainstream school in Madras shows that Asia is starting to recognize that there are, in fact, solutions to this problem. "You can't fix poor eyesight, but you can wear glasses," says Dr. Akira Uno, Japan's foremost expert on dyslexia. "We can't get rid of a disability. But we can teach people methods to compensate for it."

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This helpful website ptovides a range of useful information about dyslexia for Chinese-speaking parents and teachers. Dyslexia China.

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Famous Dyslexic People - Many dyslexic people have become famous, especially through their strengths in artistic awareness, physical co-ordination and empathy. Here is a list of Famous People with Dyslexia.