ABSTRACT
During the past 15 years, a consensus has gradually emerged in the scientific literature that the fundamental problem underlying dyslexia or reading disability (these terms are interchangeable) is a phonological processing deficit. In this chapter, I review the evidence for this position from a variety of sources, including (a) a description of how a phonological deficit in dyslexia manifests itself in a variety of tasks; (b) evidence that the phonological deficit in dyslexia is universal and occurs in all languages, independent of their orthographic systems; (c) the modularity of phonological processing and its independence from general cognitive ability; and (d) the role of phonological processing in beginning reading, especially for children who have difficulty acquiring basic reading skills.
