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Fifty Years of Dyslexia Research: A Personal Story

T. R. Miles

Dyslexia Unit, University of Wales, Bangor pss044@bangor.ac.uk

Abstract

I saw my first case of dyslexia in 1949. From the outset I was convinced that the manifestations of dyslexia constituted an identifiable syndrome or pattern of difficulties. It was then necessary to look for signs which in appropriate conjunctions would constitute a definition of this syndrome. In 1962 Dr Alfred White Franklin convened a conference (which turned out to be a rather stormy one) at St. Bartholomew's Hospital. This led to the creation of the Word Blind Centre in Coram's Fields. From the mid sixties I started assessing people in Bangor, and gradually a standardised procedure evolved. By the mid 70s it was possible to start systematic experimentation and quantification. The Bangor Dyslexia Test was an attempt to operationalise clinical judgements of dyslexia. It was particularly important to submit the "syndrome" hypothesis of dyslexia to the Popperian principle of falsification - my basic thesis would have been falsified if on test-items which I believed to be tests of dyslexia control subjects had performed no differently. Four "dyslexia" items were included in the 10-year follow up of the British Births Cohort Study in 1980, and it has been possible to analyse data on over 12,000 10-year-olds.

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