What is the difference between a reading disability and dyslexia?
There may be no difference at all. Some children may miss an important window for the development of their reading skills, and if they haven’t fallen too far behind, with proper instruction can “catch up.” Whereas, dyslexia manifests itself due to differences in the brain, specifically in processing phonological information; and it is lifelong. When you go to seek help for a “reading problem”, depending on who does the diagnosis and in what context, you could walk away with a diagnosis of either dyslexia or reading disability for the very same behaviors or symptoms. In the public schools reading disability is diagnosed as a specific learning disability in written word decoding, reading comprehension, and/or written expression. In the context of our Center, we diagnose a reading problem as dyslexia if the behaviors meet the definition. Dyslexia is a language-based learning disability and is defined as “… a specific learning disability that is neurobiological in origin. It is characteriz
