ABSTRACT
Forty-five years ago, the leading question (when nobody had heard of the term Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) people often asked in my clinic was “Does my child have dyslexia or does my child have a language disorder of a broader nature?” With the increasing use of the term ADHD and with the increasing spread of the diagnosis given great scope by the term “Autistic Spectrum Disorder,” language disorders as the context for reading problems have become much less frequently spoken about or thought of then was the case 40 years ago. The older way of thinking of dyslexia as the very mildest form of language disorder is closer to the neurobiological reality, because in fact dyslexia actually means “trouble with words” (one’s lexicon is one’s dictionary of words); dyslexia is a particular circumscribed form of a language disorder. In its purest form, dyslexia refers to problems with the speech sound level of language.
