A team of researchers from the University of Hong Kong's (HKU) State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Sciences has been shedding new light on dyslexia, especially among Chinese children.
Published last month, their latest research adds support to the team's previous findings that the nature of dyslexia differs from child to child depending on which language they speak.
It is estimated that 7 to 9 per cent of children in Hong Kong are dyslexic, compared with a 17 per cent global average. Put simply, dyslexia is characterised by a severe reading problem affecting people who otherwise have normal IQ levels, background and schooling.
The HKU team's findings could have a profound affect on how dyslexic children in Hong Kong and the mainland are diagnosed, and the type of teaching and treatment they receive.
Their initial research was conducted in 2004 and used Functional MRI scans to compare the brains of dyslexic and non-dyslexic Chinese children as they read Chinese characters. The results were then compared with previous results of similar studies conducted on dyslexic children whose reading language was English.
'We found that at the biological and brain level, dyslexia is not the same disorder in Chinese children as it is in Western children,' said Dr Siok Wai-ting, assistant professor in the school of humanities and leader of the research team. '[This is because] there are different parts of the brain involved between reading an alphabetic language and reading Chinese characters.'