Dyslexia versus visual difficulties in reading and writing. A comment in discussion

Abstract

Due to the fact that it is frequently difficult to identify their etiological origins, reading and writing difficulties have inconsistent terminology in the literature. This article is a review and attempts to initiate a discussion about visual dyslexia. The authors pose the question whether - in the context of new neuroimaging methods and the neurosciences broadly defined - there exist reading and writing difficulties that stem from impaired functioning of the visual system and whether they can be assigned to developmental dyslexia. If it is assumed that developmental dyslexia is linguistic in nature, these are phonological deficits that come to the fore in children entering the world of reading. These phonological processing deficits impair word decoding (word identification), making word recognition impossible, thus preventing access to higher-order linguistic processes, that is comprehending meaning from texts or building one’s own narratives.