Evidence-based treatment of dyslexic Chinese patients urged

A conference on dyslexia this week called for more evidence-based treatment for Chinese patients.

After the First International on Reading and Writing 'Update on Managing Dyslexia', conference chairman Leung Man-tak said evidence-based treatment was globally insufficient.

'Over the past few decades, a number of advances have been made on assessment and identification of children suffering from developmental dyslexia,' said Dr Leung, who is also an assistant professor in the University of Hong Kong's department of speech and hearing sciences.

'By contrast, work on developing evidence-based remediation for these children, especially in Chinese, has been far less profuse. The effort spent on evidence-based school remediation remains insufficient.'

Dr Leung said developing treatment was a very difficult and time-consuming process.

'In the current academic scenario, scholars who study dyslexia are more interested in theories than treatment,' he said. 'This is reflected in the pattern of papers submitted to conferences and published in journals. I hope this conference can start a new wave of study in the field by combining the efforts of scholars in the mainland, Taiwan and Hong Kong and perhaps Singapore, to work on the treatment for Chinese dyslexic parents,' Dr Leung said.