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There is a difference MS is a diagnosable medical condition, Dyslexia is a man made problem, language dependent, and the symptom of at least three types of cognitive disabilities.
The UK dyslexia industry is just that an industry making money out of dyslexia, selling remedial programs and diagnostic processes. When our eldest was diagnosed as being dyslexic back in 1997/8 we looked for information etc from the UK dyslexia industry, including the BDA, and as we have discovered in the the years since they came up short, and were only interest if you could benefit from the programs they were providing. They even own and have editorial control of one of the leading dyslexia research journals to influence and skew the presentation of research.
Developmental Dyslexia is what affects most children, and there are three cognitive subtypes auditory, visual, and attentional. Which means that the dyslexic symptom can be caused by an auditory processing disorder, a visual processing disorder, an attention disorder, or any combination of the three. Ideally dyslexia should be assessed by a multi - discipline team, an audiologist to assess for any auditory processing problems, an optometrist to assess for any visual processing problems, and a psychologist to assess for any attention problems. in this respect dyslexia is a screening process for the three types of disability. And each of the cognitive subtypes have their own different sets of symptoms, and the shared symptom of dyslexia.
Going back to reading. Reading is about using a man made communication system the visual notation of speech, and more specifically using the writing system, the set of graphic symbols, and the language how society chooses to use these graphic symbols to represent the sounds of speech. We use an alphabet writing system, the most complex type of writing system, the Latin Alphabet writing system. And we use English which is has the most complex language structure in the Latin Alphabet writing system. Reading, writing, and spelling are about decoding and recoding the graphic symbols which represent the sounds of speech to derive meaning from text.
The purest writing system, logographic writing system have a single word to single graphic correspondence (Chinese, Japanese graphic symbols), where as the more complex alphabet writing systems have multiple graphic symbols (letters) to represent the whole sound of a word. So each language has a subtly different cognitive skill set requirement to perform the task of reading, and it also means that different forms of sensory information processing deficits, disorders can cause the dyslexic symptom.
It has been from Alexia (acquired dyslexia) research that the psycholinguistic models of haw we learn to read have evolved, and this has be supported by the more recent neuroimaging research identifying the areas of brain activity involved in the reading process, and also identifying corresponding areas of inactivity dyslexics experience, and also alternative areas of activity where we run our coping strategies. Unfortunately both the UK government and the BDA have been ignoring this international research for their own internal agenda reasons.
To be able to use phonics it is assumed that you have goo listening and attention skills and abilities. So those who have an auditory processing disorder (APD) (listening disability) or an attention deficit will have problems using phonics. I have APD and due to my APD I have problems processing the gaps between sounds the sounds that make up words, and the sounds between words in rapid speech. So although I understand the concept of phonics I can never use it.
You may find some of the links in my Dyslexia and Reading links list of some interest