ABSTRACT
Specific reading disability, as an etiological concept, carries with it the implicit assumption that reading problems in beginning readers are caused primarily by constitutional factors such as organic disorder or genetic limitations that adversely affect cognitive abilities that underlie reading ability. Yet, notwithstanding commonly used exclusionary criteria designed to distinguish between factors that lead to relatively circumscribed learning difficulties and factors that lead to general learning difficulties (e.g., low general intelligence, sensory deficits, emotional disorder, environmental impoverishment), there are no definitive criteria that would allow us to distinguish between constitutional causes of reading disability and experiential causes such as inadequate instruction and/or inadequate preliteracy experience. And, whereas psychological studies conducted in recent years have provided highly convergent evidence that reading disability may be caused by language deficits of one description or another rather than visual-spatial or occulo-motor deficits, as was once believed to be the case, there is not uniform agreement as to which of the language systems is a preeminent cause of the disorder. Results from genetic, neurological, and electrophysiological studies are also consistent with a language deficit explanation of reading disability, but results from these studies are yet inconclusive.
