The Major Cognitive Deficits of Dyslexia

Researches on cognitive deficits of dyslexia in alphabetic languages and non-alphabetic languages claim that deficits of phonological skills exist in both kinds of languages, while these deficits are apparently quite different from each other. Findings on dyslexic alphabetic readers suggest that the nature of dyslexia lies in deficits of phonological skills and rapid automatic naming. Chinese dyslexia, however, has different manifestations with reading disorders in alphabetic languages. The main deficits of Chinese reading disorders include orthographic skills deficiency, slower rapid automatic naming speed, and less implicit sequence learning. In China, studies in these fields are relatively scarce and insufficient; therefore, a comprehensive system of theory and research on Chinese dyslexia remains to be constructed.