Reading Difficulties and Dyslexia: Essential Concepts and Programs for Improvement

Previously, dyslexia was defined as primarily a deficit at the word reading level. When the original edition of this book was published, the core deficit was thought to be phonological coding. The search for a single factor for dyslexia is no longer pursued. However, we must explore why approximately 15 per cent of school children have difficulties in learning to read or doing math. This updated edition offers an explanation based on contemporary developments in the study of cognition and neuroscience. It also studies the impact of poverty on learning, a relatively new but extremely important area of interest.

Going beyond a simple view of reading and math, Reading Difficulties and Dyslexia discusses distal factors such as cognitive flexibility and attentional control. A distinguishing feature of this book is that it presents intervention programmes, based on the distal factors, which can greatly improve word decoding and comprehension, and enhance number sense.

J.P. Das is an Indo-Canadian psychologist and an internationally recognized expert in Intelligence. Among his major contributions to psychology is the PASS (Planning, Attention, Simultaneous, and Successive) theory of intelligence. He is currently engaged in expanding planning to include executive functions. What might be the implications of these higher mental activities for education as well as management behavior is the topic of this book.

Professor Das is an Emeritus Director of the Centre on Developmental & Learning Disabilities (named after him) at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, and Emeritus Professor in Educational Psychology. He has authored and co-authored over a dozen of books and contributed more than 300 research papers to international journals and edited volumes. His earlier published titles with SAGE include Cognitive Planning: The Psychological Basis of Intelligent Behaviour (1996, co-authored with Binod C. Kar and Rauno K. Parrila); The Working Mind (1998); Reading Difficulties and Dyslexia: An Interpretation for Teachers (2009); and Consciousness Quest: East Meets West (2014).