Comments on: Dyslexia in Chinese Readers vs. English Readers

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 07:55:12 +0000

Josh: I don’t think we know what you say for certain across ideographic vs. alphabet based languages. The specific cases I know of with stroke damage involved Chinese individuals who learned English later than the Chinese.Yes, it does imply that we use different areas of the brain depending on what kind of language we speak. My problem with his is that the researchers seem to have a causal model that runs: Gene(or something) causes disease in a particular part of the brain, which causes a syndrome (dyslexia). My alternative suggestion is that something (genetic or developmental) causes language dyslexia no matter where the language function is distributed, which causes a different language function than “normal” which causes rearrangement of neurons. Thus, the neural rearrangement would be in different parts of the brain if those language functions are distributed in different parts of the brain.John: I would predict that the differences would not be visible in infants because infants are not English or Chinese speakers yet.

By: HI

HI — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 02:22:00 +0000

Doesn’t this simply mean that phonetic (English) and ideographic (Chinese) writing systems are processed in different areas of the brain?An interesting case is Japanese, which uses combination of phonetic symbols (hiragana and katakana) and ideographic symbols (kanji = Chinese characters). It is known (I suppose from studying patients with alexia) that lesions in one area of the brain disrupt reading of hiragana and katakana (phonetic writing) but leave comprehension of kanji (ideographic writing) largely intact. So, it makes a lot of sense that dyslexia in English and Chinese readers are caused by different abnormalities in the brain.

By: John Hayes

John Hayes — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 01:36:26 +0000

As the dyslexia research community generally stays focused in investigating one area of the brain at a timethis study should help promote the concept that particular dyslexics have particular difficulties generated in particular areas of the brain.I would be interested in whether the cultural and reading style differences show the same result of being able to see differences in Chinese dyslexics and English dyslexics as groups but without the ability to identify a dyslexic as either Chinese or English. This seems to be the common result with fMRI results when looking at one area of the brain with dyslexics and non dyslexics because of the overlap of results.Could it also be possible to identify a brain as being Chinese or English by MRI and what might be learned from that fact ? If so are the same differences also seen in infants?

By: the real cmf

the real cmf — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 00:26:03 +0000

“has provided insights into our knowledge of associations between structural and functional abnormalities in dyslexic individuals”…I think that is all I would feel safe saying; the rest is conjecture.”suggests that dyslexia may even be two different brain disorders in the two cultures”My red flag goes up when I read or hear that a bio or psychogenic disorder is ‘different across culture.’ That in and of itself makes me cautious, if only because it implies false ‘race’ factors and makes me wonder if the researchers studied the same thing.”dyslexia could be a condition caused by something, which in turn changes processing patterns, which in turn results in the differences”hmmm…there are three main types of dyslexia, and some of them are caused directly( in the case of trauma dyslexia)The basic idea as I understand it is that it is likely genetic; but (Greg, you will love this one–from a homeschool perspective) some say it is caused by ‘teaching methods’, as opposed to exacerbated by them;-)http://www.sntp.net/education/look_say_3.htm

By: Joshua Zelinsky

Joshua Zelinsky — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 23:44:41 +0000

You write that “Earlier research had shown that individuals with linguistic abilities in both English and Chinese who later suffer brain damage (such as a stroke) may have aphaisa (inability to produce or comprehend language) in relation to one language but not the other.” We’re the speakers in question native speakers of both languages? If I recall, we use different areas of the brain for native languages as opposed to languages learned later in life. So if the people in question were native speakers of only one language, couldn’t such damage have selectively damaged an area used only for native or non-native languages?