A Discussion of Reading Disorders: Perceptual, Cognitive and Mnemonic Elements

In some ways the very idea of a reading disorder makes little sense; particularly in light of the “all things being equal” paradigm – i.e. that reading teachers and curriculum materials are usually adequate vehicles by which to impart this skill. To some extent, this is also true with regard to neuro-developmental factors. Children with reading disorders are usually normal in every respect, which runs contrary to the global brain dysfunction hypothesis inferable from these various research and theoretical sources. In that context, assume the child has normal vision, hearing and language-associative capacities. That combination of skills should enable the child to develop the visual associative capacities needed to learn letters and words, the auditory/phonetic capacities to understand sound-symbol relationships and the linguistic ability to interpret reading passages within a communicative/grammatical framework. This issue of NASET's LD Report, written by Robert DePaolo (and reprinted with permission by Doug Goldberg from The Special Education Advisor at http://www.specialeducationadvisor.com/a-discussion-of-reading-disorders-perceptual-cognitive-and-mnemonic-elements/ ), addresses perceptual, cognitive and mnemonic elements of reading disorders