Dyslexia in Chinese

A couple weeks ago, the readings for class were about reading and text. It got me thinking about paper I recently read on the differences between Chinese and English Dyslexia.

It makes sense that in such different writing systems, that reading difficulties would have different origins. However, there seem to be more similarities than differences in Chinese and English dyslexia. They conclude that it can be caused by poor orthographic, semantic and phonological processing.

What I found really interesting: They also found that difficulties learning pinyin (the Chinese phonetic system taught to younger kids alongside characters) is more prominent than difficulties learning Chinese characters. It would be interesting to investigate if there's something inherently more difficult for people with dyslexia to understand a romanized-phonetic system of writing, or if it's simply that being taught Chinese characters alongside pinyin offers natural multiple representations of written language and actually help kids with phonetic difficulties.

Although, it is important to note that Dyslexia is not less of a problem in China. So, perhaps, Chinese characters help some kids who have phonetic deficits circumvent their difficulties learning written language, but it also may (perhaps) create difficulties for kids who have mild spacial or visual processing difficulties. It's a pretty good argument for UDL, eh?


If you're interested~
Dyslexia in Chinese: Clues from Cognitive Neuropsychology