Main description:

This book is unique in that it brings together in one place an account of recent advances in our understanding of the biology of dyslexia. It grew out of a Rodin Remediation Foundation International conference held on this topic in Boulder, Colorado in 1990, which included most of the world's experts on the genetics and neurology of dyslexia. Ten years ago a volume on this topic would scarcely been possible, and now we have an emerging, comprehensive neuroscientific understanding of this complex behavioral disorder that goes from genes to brain to behavior. Building on recent advances in the understanding of the cognitive phenotype of dyslexia, these authors present new data on both the etiology and brain mechanisms underlying that phenotype. Reading disability or dyslexia has a high familial recurrence rate, and is partly heritable. Genetic linkage studies are beginning to identify the possible locations of genes influencing this phenotype. On the neurological side, several independent studies have found neuroanatomical differences in the dyslexic brain, which are due to early changes in brain development. Thus, contrary to the views held by some educators that dyslexia is a myth, the results presented in this book firmly establish dyslexia as a real, biological condition.
This book is relevant to researchers and practitioners concerned with both normal and abnormal reading development.

Contents:

Genetic and Neurological Influences on Reading Disability: An Overview.- One: Genetics.- Risk for Reading Disability as a Function of Parental History in Three Family Studies.- Antecedents to Reading Disability: Preschool Language Development and Literacy Experiences of Children from Dyslexic Families.- Confirmatory Factor Analysis of Word Recognition and Process Measures in the Colorado Reading Project.- Which Aspects of Processing Text Mediate Genetic Effects?.- Genetic Etiology of Spelling Deficits in the Colorado and London Twin Studies of Reading Disability.- Screening for Multiple Genes Influencing Dyslexia.- Multiple Regression Analysis of Sib-Pair Data on Reading to Detect Quantitative Trait Loci.- Cognitive and Academic Skills in Children with Sex Chromosome Abnormalities.- Two: Neurology / Neuropsychology.- Planum Temporale Asymmetry: In-Vivo Morphometry Affords a New Perspective for Neuro-Behavioral Research.- Developmental Dyslexia, Neurolinguistic Theory and Deviations in Brain Morphology.- The Neuropathology of Developmental Dysphasia: Behavioral, Morphological, and Physiological Evidence for a Pervasive Temporal Processing Disorder.- Investigation of Abnormal Left Temporal Functioning in Dyslexia Through rCBF, Auditory Evoked Potentials, and Positron Emisson Tomography.- Cerebral Laterality in Dyslexic Children: Implications for Phonological Word Decoding Deficits.- Vocabulary Acquisition and Reading Ability.- Three: Discussion.- Observations from the Sidelines.- Hemispheric Specialisation and Dyslexia.