After hearing Steve Inskeep of NPR’s Morning Edition perpetuate the myth that individuals with dyslexia suffer from reversals, I submitted the following comment via the NPR Web site.
Dear Mr. Inskeep,
I was sorry to learn that you have the mistaken idea that the Learning Disability called dyslexia is characterized by “seeing things backwards.” I was even sorrier to hear you communicate this misinformation during an interview about dyslexia and entrepreneurship on 26 December.
Even though it persists among people who have not examined the research about it, the idea of reversals has been shown to be false in multiple scientific studies. To be sure, individuals with dyslexia make more reversal errors (read “was” as “saw”; confuse b and d), but that is simply because they make more errors overall; the ratio of reversal errors to total errors is the same among individuals with and without dyslexia.
I hope you can correct the misinformation that you passed along to to the large listenship of Morning Edition.
John Wills Lloyd, Ph.D.
Executive Director
Division for Learning Disabilitieshttp://TeachingLD.org
For those who didn’t know or have forgotten, this is not the first time I’ve fretted about the accuracy of NPR’s coverage. For previous posts on this subject, see here (and see an earlier post about NPR’s coverage of Mel Levine).
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Thanks, John. My take is below
http://lizditz.typepad.com/i_speak_of_dreams/2007/12/when-will-peopl.html
If “seeing things backward” and “disorganization” sums up Logan’s understanding of dyslexia in adults, it doesn’t bode well for the rigor of her research.
Grades came for the darling dyslexic college student daughter–whoot! I won’t embarrass her with letters and numbers,but it is safe to say that she is thriving at Clark University.
Thanks, folks, for the comments. It’s good to have other’s support on this matter. Liz, I like your gathering of links to other sources of both accurate and mistaken treatments of the topic. Trusted (was that you, Dimitri?), I’m glad your site picked up Liz’s post.
One might wonder why I am concerned about what some might see as a small matter. The reasons I have commented repeatedly about the mistaken idea that reversals are indicative of Learning Disabilities in reading are several. Here are a few of them:
* It leads people to waste precious time and effort on false remedies.
* It oversimplifies the problems experienced by individuals with dyslexia.
* It distracts people from the very real problems.
* It’s just wrong.
Here’s a link to the NPR Web page about the interview. It includes a recording of the interview.