Contemporary History
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More recently, research has focused on children with specific learning difficulties. For the first time, most of these published works discriminated between specific reading difficulties and poor reading. These works implied that specific reading difficulties were synonymous with dyslexia. Yuke and Rutter (1976) argued that specific reading retardation should be acknowledged as such and not labeled as dyslexia. Later advancements included the foundation of the Ordblind Institute in Copenhagen for word-blind children in 1936. In addition, The Invalid Children's Aid Association on Word-Blindness or Specific Developmental Dyslexia conference was held in 1962. It was at this conference that terms like "alexia", "dyslexia", and "word-blindness" were used to describe the loss of reading ability following brain lesions. Papers that were presented reflected the commonalties that were found in cases of people with dyslexia. The observations expressed in these papers were based on the following grounds:
- Retarded readers, represent the lower continuum of reading levels.
- Poor teaching, unstimulating environment, emotional disturbances, and lack of motivation could explain reading retardation. The broad area of agreement made by the panel was that dyslexia is a constitutional disorder, sometimes genetically determined.
Most recently, research has focused on determining the exact nature of the disorder either by a physiological mechanism and on determining the succinct subtypes of dyslexia. (Piorzzado, Wittrock)
*Popular press reports that Cher is dyslexic, but this has not been confirmed.
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