Directional Confusion as a Sign of Dyslexia

Abstract

The concept of dyslexia is both important and ambiguous. In an effort to reduce the ambiguity of the concept, several hundred second-grade school children were tested for primary reading errors and for two non-reading characteristics often mentioned as signs of dyslexia. Through analyses based in large part on the logic of mixed-group validation (Dawes & Meehl, 1966), confusion in identification of left and right was implicated as a sign of dyslexia, and crossed hand-eye dominance was tentatively rejected as one. Thus, severe reading errors and directional confusion appear intertwined as components of dyslexia. Moreover, the study provided some support for the conceptual and practical potentials of the logic on which it was based.