Angela Fawcett, Emeritus professor, Swansea University and Dyslexia Association of Singapore
Revisiting the Cerebellar Deficit and Phonology: An Explanatory Theory
Thursday, 27 June 2019

For many years, our claims that the cerebellum was involved in dyslexia were largely dismissed by established researchers, because there seemed to be no clear link with regions traditionally associated with dyslexia. In this talk, I revisit our cerebellar hypothesis, in the light of new evidence that has revealed for the first time the underlying mechanisms. In an exciting study, US authors (September, 2018) have determined that the cerebellum is implicated in reading by connections with the phonological and semantic circuits, as well as orthographic processing for both familiar and unfamiliar words. These findings confirm all the earlier theoretical research from our group, including automaticity, conscious compensation and procedural learning. Most importantly these insights have strong implications for educational support and confirm our long-standing belief that a broad approach targeting the whole child is likely to be the most effective and cost-effective overall. In terms of assessment, it is important to check for speed of performance, as well as accuracy, using Rapid naming tests, measuring writing fluency and simple motor speed, as well as executive function, and non-word reading tests. Further implications for intervention will be discussed.

свернуть