Dyslexia is usually a nightmare for those who have it. Difficulties reading or spelling can surely make you feel uncomfortable and not being able to keep your chin up. But maybe we’ve all been looking at the disorder from the wrong perspective.
What’s perhaps surprising is that a lot of people across the world suffer from dyslexia. About 80 to 90 percent of those who have some level of learning disabilities are also dealing with dyslexia. But futurism.com now tells us that scientists from Cambridge believe that it’s possible for dyslexia to participate in the adaptation and success of our species, thanks to a new study.
A new perspective on dyslexia
The research team believes that dyslexia can actually motivate people to search for new knowledge instead of interpreting information that has already become available. There’s even a chance that the condition might have played a very important role in the survival of our species. It surely sounds incredible at first glance, but the scientists involved in the study also think that “the deficit-centered view of dyslexia isn’t telling the whole story,” as lead author Helen Taylor stated.
Taylor also explained as quoted by the same source:
We believe that the areas of difficulty experienced by people with dyslexia result from a cognitive trade-off between exploration of new information and exploitation of existing knowledge, with the upside being an explorative bias that could explain enhanced abilities observed in certain realms like discovery, invention and creativity.
Did you know that a percentage between 70 and 85% of children who are undergoing special education for learning disabilities also deal with dyslexia? Based on the new study, perhaps they’ll be giving some credit from now on.
The new research was published in Frontiers of Psychology.
