Two psychologists at the University of Cambridge, Helen Taylor and Martin David Vestergaard, have reexamined the traditional view of developmental dyslexia as a disadvantage and suggested that its neurological features may hold advantages under different circumstances.
Let’s look at the advantages of dyslexia revealed in the research of psychologists from Cambridge University, and let’s give a small summary for those who do not know exactly what dyslexia is.
What is dyslexia?
For those who do not know about dyslexia, let’s give a brief summary; Dyslexia; It is a common learning disorder that mainly causes problems with reading, writing, and spelling. People with this disorder, where intelligence is not affected despite learning difficulties, have the same letters in sentences as in the animated image above.
It turns out that dyslexia has an overlooked advantage
Psychologists specifically suggest that brains that find it difficult to interpret written words quickly find it easier to explore their environment for helpful clues that improve decision-making. Developmental dyslexia is described as difficulty in converting the visual format of a written word into a meaningful sound group.
Between 5 and 20% of the world’s population has dyslexia, these people often acquire the ability to read as late as a year and lag behind as their peers progress. In a standardized education system, the knock-on effect of this delay can be profound, lowering confidence and self-esteem, and potentially causing a host of social problems.
For decades, psychologists have noted that those who show symptoms of dyslexia also tend to be better at global abstract and spatial reasoning. They also tend to be more creative and are better at predicting outcomes.
In a world where their ability to extract information from texts is valued, this may be a strategy these people can use to get around problems, but Taylor and Vestergaard don’t think that’s the case, they say:
“We believe that the areas of difficulty experienced by people with dyslexia result from a cognitive trade-off between discovering new information and using existing information, the opposite being an exploratory bias that may explain the enhanced abilities observed in certain realms such as exploration.”
Psychologically speaking, our minds are constrained by a constant conflict called the exploration-exploitation trade-off. To make a decision, we need to be comfortable with the likelihood that the information we have will result in an accurate and predictable outcome.
Despite the risk of losing, we can wait until we have better information, but if we act too quickly we may not find out why our decision was a mistake. “Striking the balance between exploring new opportunities and reaping the benefits of a particular choice is key to adaptation and survival and underlies many of the decisions we make in our daily lives,” Taylor says.
In summary, what psychologists mean is that people with dyslexia can make the right decision much more quickly, especially on vital issues, compared to people who don’t. In other words, people with dyslexia may be given priority for a job that requires important decisions in another universe.
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