Characteristics of developmental dyslexia and its manifestation in adulthood

Abstract

Developmental dyslexia (DD), contrary to acquired dyslexia, can be observed since the first school years. It is a specific disorder in word recognition operations, which affects the reader’s fluency and impairs his reading comprehension in various degrees. The reader’s writing abilities are also affected. In current literature, various terms have been used to refer to dyslexia. Today we seek a greater consensus in this regard. It is also important to point out that research on dyslexia has been focused on the school children profile, due to the fact that it is in this period that difficulties resulting from DD have a greater impact. Consequently, little is known about dyslexia in adult subjects, how their reading and writing abilities evolved (or not), their main living difficulties in many ways, and how the disorder affected their professional choices. This paper presents the main definitions found for DD and how the term “disorder” and its respective characteristics came to be consolidated by scientists. A brief review of research that points to the difficulties adult dyslexics have in reading and writing abilities, as well as in phonological awareness, is also carried out. To close, a case study compares the results obtained in the reading and writing performance of a subject with DD diagnosis and a control subject.