The Paradoxical Relationship between Intelligence and Reading Disability

Abstract

Specific reading disability or developmental dyslexia is a condition wherein an individual with average or superior intelligence does not acquire normal reading skills. This paper provides a tentative explanation of the paradoxical relationship between the reading disability and intelligence. Study of 15 dyslexic college students showed that they were deficient in grapheme-phoneme conversion and that the decoding skill could be an autonomous, specific ability that is independent of the “g” factor as expressed in terms of IQ. The decoding skill appears to be a subroutine and may, in dyslexia, operate as a limiting factor that affects reading comprehension.