Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Research news: Language sways dyslexia's effect

The News:
Language sways dyslexia's effect
A study of kids raised reading Chinese or English means different tacks may be needed.
By Randolph E. Schmid The Associated Press
Article Last Updated: 04/08/2008 12:20:21 AM MDT
WASHINGTON — Dyslexia affects different parts of children's brains depending on whether they are raised reading English or Chinese.
That finding, reported in Monday's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, means that therapists may need to seek different methods of assisting dyslexic children from different cultures.
"This finding was very surprising to us," said lead author Li-Hai Tan, a professor of linguistics and brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Hong Kong. "Our finding yields neurobiological clues to the cause of dyslexia."
Millions of children worldwide are affected by dyslexia, a language-based learning disability that can include problems in reading, spelling, writing and pronouncing words.
Reading an alphabetic language such as English requires different skills than reading Chinese, which relies less on sound representation, instead using symbols to represent words.
Past studies have suggested that the brain may use different networks of neurons in different languages, but none has suggested a difference in the structural parts of the brain involved, Tan said. Read on...

The Research:
Read the research behind this story in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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