Applied Psycholinguistics (1986) 7, 77-84

Printed in the United States of America

Who is dyslexic? Reply to Wolf

MARK S. SEIDENBERG, MARGARET BRUCK, AND GAIL FORNAROLO
McGill University, Montreal

JOAN BACKMAN
Izaak Walton Killam Hospital for Children, Halifax, N.S.

ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE

Mark Seidenberg, Department of Psychology, McGill University, 1205 Docteur Penfield,
Montreal PQ, Canada H3A 1B1

Reading educators and clinicians dating from Orton (1928) have asserted that
dyslexic children exhibit impairments in one or more aspects of the reading
process that are not seen in nondyslexic children. There has been chronic dis-
agreement about the identity and causes of these impairments, but their existence
has been generally assumed. We will term this the standard view of dyslexia.'
Our study (Seidenberg, Bruck, Fornarolo, & Backman, 1985) was motivated
by the following concern. Despite general acceptance of the standard view, the
usual diagnostic criteria for dyslexia do not involve assessments of children's
actual reading processes. This fact is troubling. One might have thought that if it
were true that dyslexic children exhibit idiosyncratic impairments, the diagnosis
of dyslexia would be based upon direct observation of these impairments. Just as
apraxia is diagnosed on the basis of characteristic disorders of the motoric sys-
tem, and schizophrenia is diagnosed on the basis of characteristic disorders of
personality and behavior, dyslexia would be diagnosed on the basis of charac-
teristic impairments in the reading process. The fact that dyslexia is a general
category not based on details of the child's actual performance reflects our
current lack of knowledge about this condition.
Our question was an empirical one: if we take a group of children who fit the
clinical criteria for dyslexia and examine in detail one important aspect of their
reading skill - word recognition - will their performance differ from that of
nondyslexics? In particular, we were concerned with whether their performance
would reveal impaired processes that are not seen in nondyslexic children. In
looking for such deficits, our thinking was guided by recent research on various
forms of dyslexia acquired following brain injury (e.g., Coltheart, Patterson, &
Morton, 1980). Deep dyslexics, for example, read in a manner that is distinctly
different from that of normals at any age; even very young and normal children
do not make systematic semantic paraphasias. By using a wide range of measures
of word decoding skill, we sought to determine whether children with clinical

© 1986 Cambridge University Press 0142-7164/ 86/010077-08 $2.50

Applied Psycholinguistics 7:1 78
Seidenberg et al.: Who is dyslexic?
diagnoses of dyslexia would exhibit impairments with this character. We as-
sumed that such impairments would be revealed by idiosyncratic patterns in
response latencies or types of errors.
On the basis of our data, we concluded that performance of our subjects
classified as dyslexic was similar to that of the poor readers. On most of our
measures, there were no quantitative differences between poor and disabled
groups (although both differed from good readers). On a few measures, the
disabled readers performed more poorly as a group. The most that could be said
about the dyslexic readers was that some, not all, performed worse than poor
readers on some, not all, measures. None of the dyslexic readers showed mark-
edly aberrant patterns of performance; one could not, on the basis of their
performance alone, determine which were the clinically defined dyslexic chil-
dren and which the poor readers. Hence we concluded that children who are
diagnosed as dyslexic do not necessarily exhibit decoding patterns that differ
from those of nondyslexic children.
Wolf (1985) asserts that our poor and disabled readers did in fact differ in the
manner the standard view suggests. Because the dyslexic readers performed
worse than the poor readers on several measures, she concludes that the dyslexic
readers showed group-specific impairments. However, these quantitative dif-
ferences between groups cannot refute our basic conclusion. Even on those
measures for which disabled readers performed more poorly as a group, there
were children whose performance did not differ from that of some poor readers.
This is simply a consequence of the fact that the distributions of scores for the
two groups overlapped. It would be incorrect to conclude that all of the dyslexic
children performed worse than the poor readers even where there are significant
between-group differences. Hence our conclusion stands: the performance of
children diagnosed as dyslexic does not necessarily differ from that of non-
dyslexic poor readers. Perhaps this conclusion is easier to comprehend when
stated in the equivalent form: some dyslexic children's performance does not
differ from that of nondyslexic poor readers. Nothing in Wolf's discussion of the
between-group differences bears on this conclusion.
It could nonetheless be the case that at least some of our disabled readers
differed from the poor readers in the manner suggested by the standard view.
This appears to be Wolf's primary concern. Since there were between-group
differences on some of our measures, there must have been some dyslexic
children who performed worse than the poor readers. Assume further that the
children whose performance did not differ from that of poor readers were simply
miscategorized, owing to subject selection problems and the like. This would
imply that, although the standard criteria for diagnosing dyslexia cast much too
wide a net, nonetheless, there are "true" dyslexics.
There are two issues here, and we are probably guilty of having failed to
clearly distinguish between them in our original paper. One is whether these
between-group differences indicate that at least some dyslexic readers differed
from the poor readers in the manner suggested by the standard view. Second,
even if the standard view is incorrect, do these differences provide some other
basis for distinguishing dyslexics from other children?
Regarding the first of these alternatives, the standard view is that dyslexic
children exhibit idiosyncratic disorders in components of the reading process.
Applied Psycholinguistics 7:1 79
Seidenberg et al.: Who is dyslexic?

They don't simply read poorly, they read differently. In arguing that the quan-
titative differences between groups support this characterization of at least some
of our subjects, Wolf has ignored a key argument in our paper. We noted that the
dyslexic readers performed worse than poor readers on measures that also differ-
entiated the poor readers from the good ones. All groups showed the same
patterns in terms of response latencies (e.g., flat latencies across word classes),
and made the same types of errors (e.g., consonant and vowel errors, regulariza-
tions). They differed only in relative latencies and numbers of errors (on selected
measures). This is the outcome that would be expected if all groups utilized the
same basic decoding processes, with between-group differences in efficiency or
skill. If the dyslexic readers differ from the poor readers along the same dimen-
sions that differentiate poor readers from good, it cannot be concluded that the
dyslexic readers' performance is due to decoding processes specific to this
group. Hence the results fail to provide evidence for the kind of qualitative
differences between groups entailed by the standard view.
Further evidence that the disabled readers used the same kinds of decoding
processes as normals is provided by the observation that the differences between
poor and disabled readers in the Seidenberg et al. study are very similar to
differences we observed between nondyslexic reader groups in the Backman et
al. (1984) study. In the latter study, there were similar differences between good
and poor readers in grades 3-4. The same measures that discriminated between
these groups also accounted for differences among good readers in grades 2,3,4
and high school. Hence disabled readers do not differ in terms of the kinds of
errors they make; their performance, on some measures, is simply worse. We
conclude that the dyslexics' data fall on a clear continuum with those of the good
and poor readers. On most measures, the dyslexics' performance overlaps with
that of the poor readers; on some, they are somewhat lower. They do not exhibit
idiosyncratic ("qualitatively different") types of decoding processes; they use
the same decoding processes as other readers, but less effectively, producing
longer latencies and more errors.
Discussions as to whether differences between dyslexic and normal readers are
"quantitative" or "qualitative" are notoriously fuzzy. We provided an explicit
basis for making this distinction, the logic of which should be clear. Consider
some examples. We examined six types of consonant errors in reading words and
nonwords (substitution, insertion, etc.). The ordering of consonant errors by
types is nearly identical for both poor and disabled groups on both words and
nonwords.2 However, disabled readers made more errors of the two most preva-
lent types (substitutions, insertions). The order data indicate that the children in
both groups were using similar decoding processes, producing similar types of
errors. This is one interpretation of what it means for performance to be
"qualitatively similar" across groups. The magnitude data indicate that what-
ever it is that produces substitution and insertion errors occurred more often in
disabled readers. This is what we mean by "quantitative differences" between
groups. These two types of errors were also the most prevalent ones for good
readers; hence whatever it is that produces substitution and insertion errors is not
unique to disabled readers.
Consider another example. Dyslexic readers regularized exception words less
often than poor readers, who regularized less often than good readers. However,
Applied Psycholinguistics 7:1 80
Seidenberg et al : Who is dyslexic?

the grade 2 good readers in the Backman et al. study (1984) also regularized less
often than older good readers; are these grade 2 readers dyslexic? Wolf (1986)
asserts that our data demonstrate "that phonemic analysis and grapheme-
phoneme correspondence rules are uniquely difficult for disabled readers" (p.
73; emphasis added), but this is incorrect. These skills also differentiate between
good readers at different age levels and between good and poor readers at a given
age level. Our data reveal genuine differences between groups in levels of skill;
however, the disabled readers' deficits are not in "unique" areas.3
A secondary issue is whether these quantitative differences between groups
nonetheless provide a basis for distinguishing between poor and disabled readers.
Wolf seems to suggest that the term "dyslexic" be reserved for children who
perform worst on selected measures. "Dyslexic" then becomes the term for
statistical outliers.
Here there are two points. The first is that this would mean abandoning the
standard view. Children are dyslexic not because they exhibit atypical decoding
processes, but because they perform a certain amount below a standard. We
believe that, as actually used by practioners, that is all the diagnosis of dyslexia
actually entails. It merely isolates a group of children who are bright but read
below age-expected levels. The performance of many of these children is wholly
indistinguishable from that of poor readers or younger good readers. Others are
at the tails of the distributions on some measures. We think it should be more
widely recognized there are some "dyslexics" who read in a manner that is
neither different nor worse than nondyslexic children, contrary to the standard
view; that was a primary implication of our paper. If a term is to be reserved for
those children who perform at the lowest end of the continuum, we suggest that it
be something other than "dyslexic" or "reading disabled", which carry other
connotations. Perhaps simply "very poor readers" would do. Second, establish-
ing such quantitative criteria for categorizing individuals as dyslexic is not an
issue that concerns us as reading researchers. Determining whether there are
children who have specific reading impairments not seen in other children is an
interesting theoretical issue with potentially important implications for under-
standing the nature of reading and its biological bases, and treating reading
disorders. Determining which proportion of errors counts as "dyslexic" and
which merely "poor reading" is not.
Wolf suggests that we are guilty of a pretheoretical bias toward a conception of
dyslexia as a "homogeneous" phenomenon, in contrast to recent multifactor
conceptions and thinks that our conclusion that the dyslexic subjects formed a
relatively homogeneous group followed from this bias. However, this conclusion
followed from the data. Regarding the issue of bias, the only question is this:
was there anything about the manner in which the study was designed or con-
ducted, or the manner in which the data were analyzed and reported, which
would mask differences between subjects? The design of the experiment was
such that it could well have revealed systematic individual or group differences,
had they existed. Data were also inspected on a subject-by-subject basis. As we
noted, our measures could have revealed the patterns associated with various
forms of acquired dyslexia. The data were appropriately analyzed, and all the
results were fully discussed.
Applied Psycholinguistics 7.1 81
Seidenberg et al.: Who is dyslexic?

The serious issue underlying our disagreement with Wolf is one of research
strategy. Wolf is committed to the idea that dyslexia is characterized by a large
degree of variation between individuals. Dyslexic readers exhibit a variety of
deficits, derived from different causes. This view, which is shared by many, no
doubt derives from the failure of early single-factor theories, and from the failure
to find deficits that are consistent across individuals classified as dyslexic. This
view dictates a multivariate approach to analyzing dyslexic behavior, the goal of
which is the identification of distinct subtypes of dyslexia. Wolf faults us for
failing to undertake such a study.
Our approach differs in two respects. First, we have basic questions about the
concept of dyslexia as a diagnostic category. Single-factor theories may have
been wrong, but they did have the virtue of providing a coherent basis for
distinguishing between dyslexics and normals. Dyslexics were those individuals
who exhibited characteristic types of impairments. We do not wish to resurrect
the single-factor theories. However, as a diagnostic category, dyslexia has little
value if the criteria used to assign individuals to this category do not isolate
individuals who differ systematically from others who are not so designated. Our
study suggested that the criteria do not isolate children who differ in actual
performance. Rather, the criteria isolate children who differ from other poor
readers in virtue of their relatively high verbal intelligence. As we noted in our
paper, "the category appears to be a reflection of the unexpected failure of these
intelligent children, rather than the quality of their failure."
Second, we believe that studies such as ours provide a necessary basis for
research on individual variation among dyslexics. Our goal is to understand the
primary way in which dyslexic children's performance can differ from that of
normals. An understanding of the kinds of reading processes that are impaired in
dyslexia provides the basis for addressing questions concerning individual varia-
tion. At this stage of inquiry, we do not seek to describe every case of reading
disability; rather, we seek to determine those component processes in reading
that account for the major variation between disabled and normal readers. Our
study does not deny the possibility of individual variation among dyslexics, but
neither does it assume it. We consider this to be an empirical issue that is as yet
wholly unresolved.
Despite the hypothesis that there is much heterogeneity within disabled sam-
ples and that there are many as yet unclassified subgroups, our data and those
from other laboratories have consistently identified a basic set of deficits charac-
teristic of disabled readers. Although subtyping studies are plagued by problems
of internal validity and reliability of classification, these studies consistently
identify a group of children with auditory-processing or articulatory-pho-
nological processing deficits. These deficits are manifested at the single-word
level in problems involving the acquisition and stable use of spelling - sound
correspondences (Morrison, 1984; Olson, 1985; Snowling, 1981). We infer that
our children also fit into this group. However, deficits in these areas are also
characteristic of poor readers who do not meet the diagnostic criteria for dyslex-
ia, and good readers who are beginning to read.
We conclude by noting that our conclusions concerning the similarities be-
tween disabled and normal readers are supported by other recent studies (e.g.,
Applied Psycholinguistics 7:1 82
Seidenberg et al.: Who is dyslexic?

Carpenter, 1983; Moats, 1983; Holmes & Peper, 1977; Treiman & Hirsch-
Pasek, 1985). Our data simply add to a growing body of evidence. As Stanovich
has noted in a recent review,
Reading ability forms a continuum and the farther up on it the poor reader resides,
the less likely it is that he/she will be characterized by a qualitatively different
syndrome. . . . Large numbers of school-labelled learning disabled children are
simply not cognitively differentiablc from other nonlabelled poor readers. . . . A
thorough review of the reading literature indicates that the cognitive differences
displayed by good and poor readers have been remarkably consistent regardless of
the exact points on the reading continuum from which the two groups of readers
have been drawn. It does not seem that the variables accounting for individual
differences in reading ability are markedly different at the very extremes of reading
skills. Most available evidence suggests the opposite in indicating a great degree of
similarity. The variables that differentiate slightly below-average readers from
those slightly above-average appear to be the same variables that distinguish the
severely disabled reader from a normal control group, a trend that is threatening to
the assumption of specificity via an appeal to parsimony. (Stanovich, 1985, pp.
41-42)
Exactly.

NOTES
1. Not everyone accepts the standard view. Those who believe the terms "dyslexic"
and "reading disabled" merely designate a population of children who read below
expected levels despite adequate intelligence and opportunity - implying nothing
about their actual reading processes - will find little of interest in the Seidenberg et
al. (1985) paper or this one.
2. The "nearly" is required because of a reversal in the ordering in the word data due to
error types (reversals, inversions) that produced less than one error per subject (see
Table 6 in Seidenberg et al., 1985). Another way to put this is that the ordering of
errors by types is identical for those types that produced about 94% of the errors.
3. There was exactly one measure on which good and poor readers performed similarly,
and dyslexic readers performed worse: 83% of both the good and poor readers' vowel
errors were due to giving alternate pronunciations; 62% of the disabled readers' errors
were of this type. Hence, disabled readers were more likely to give wholly incorrect
pronunciations. We hesitate to make much of this difference. It may simply reflect
differences in the children's response criteria (i.e., different strategies for responding
when they cannot read a word), and a similar level of performance might be observed
in younger, nondyslexic children.

REFERENCES
Backman, J., Brack, M., Hubert, M., & Seidenberg, M. S. (1984). Acquisition and use of spelling-
sound correspondences in reading. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology. 38, 114-133.
Carpenter, C. (1983). Spelling error profiles of able and disabled children. Journal of Learning
Disabilities. 16. 102-104.
Coltheart, M., Patterson, K., & Marshall, J. (1980). Deep dyslexia. London: Routledge & Kegan-
Paul.
Applied Psycholinguistics 7:1 83
Seidenberg el al.: Who is dyslexic?

Holmes, D. L., & Peper, R. J. (1977). An evaluation of the use of spelling error analysis in the
diagnosis of reading disabilities. Child Development, 48, 1708-1711.
Moats, L. M. (1983). A comparison of the spelling errors of older dyslexic and second-grade normal
children. Annals of Dyslexia, 33, 121-140.
Morrison, F. (1984). Word decoding and rule-learning in normal and disabled readers. Remedial and
Special Education, 5, 20-27.
Olson, R. K. (1985). Disabled reading processes and cognitive profiles. In D. Gray and J. Kavanagh
(Eds.), Behavioral measures of dyslexia. Parkton, Md.: York Press.
Orton, S. T. (1928). Specific reading disability-strephosymbolia. Journal of the American Medical
Association, 90, 1095-1099.
Seidenberg, M. S., Bruck, M., Fornarolo, G., & Backman, J. (1985). Word recognition processes
of poor and disabled readers: Do they necessarily differ? Applied Psycholinguistics, 6, 161-
180.
Snowling, M. J. (1981). Phonemic deficits in developmental dyslexia. Psychological Research, 43,
219-234.
Stanovich, K. E. (1985). Cognitive processes and the reading problems of learning disabled children:
Evaluating the assumption of specificity. In J. Torgenson & B. Wong (Eds.), Psychological
and educational perspectives on learning disabilities. New York: Academic Press.
Treiman, R., & Hirsch-Pasak, P. (1985). Are there qualitative differences in reading behavior
between dyslexic and normal readers? Memory & Cognition, 13, 357-364.
Wolf, (1986). The question of essential differences in developmental dyslexia: A response to Seiden-
berg, Bruck, Fornarolo, and Backman. Applied Psycholinguistics, 7, 69-75.