Revealing the Causes of Dyslexia through a Differential Diagnosis, a Short-Term Effective Treatment and an Appropriate Conceptual Framework

TL;DR

This paper explores the causes of dyslexia by proposing a new framework for diagnosis and treatment based on scientific methods and experiments with children.

Contribution

The paper introduces a new conceptual framework for understanding dyslexia's causes and differentiating types of dyslexia through scientific methods.

Findings

A new conceptual framework was developed to accurately describe the causes of dyslexia.

Experiments with 356 children revealed insights into the conditions required for correct reading.

Traditional philosophical concepts of causation are inadequate for explaining dyslexia.

Abstract

Various different impairments and their interactions can cause reading problems referred to as “dyslexia”. Since reading requires the interaction of many abilities, the impairment of each of these abilities can result in dyslexia. Therefore, the diagnosis must differentiate various kinds of dyslexia. The diagnosis of a certain kind of dyslexia cannot be delimited to the investigation and description of symptoms but must also include the investigation of the causes of each kind of dyslexia. For this purpose, a scientifically unequivocal concept of causation and appropriate methods are needed to distinguish them from co-existing impairments that have no causal influence on reading performance. The results of applying these methods cannot be adequately accounted for by a non-scientific, intuitive understanding of necessary and sufficient conditions and causation. The methods suitable for revealing the causes of dyslexia are described in detail, and the results of applying these methods in experiments, in which 356 children with developmental dyslexia participated, are reviewed. Since the concepts of “necessary” and “sufficient” conditions and “causation” proposed in the philosophy of science are not suitable for describing causes of dyslexia and their interaction, they are replaced by a more detailed, experimentally based conceptual framework that provides an accurate description of the conditions required for correct reading and the causes of dyslexia.

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