The Validity of the Category of Specific Developmental Reading Disorder

Abstract

The first descriptions of children who failed to learn to read in the absence of intellectual or sensory impairments appeared at the turn of the century (Hinshelwood, 1917). Since then, specific developmental reading disorder has been gradually recognized as a separate clinical entity. Various terms, such as word blindness (Orton, 1937), dyslexia (Money, 1962), specific reading retardation (Rutter & Yule, 1975), learning disability (Kirk, 1962), have been used to denote this disorder, that has been included in successive versions of DSM and ICD. In DSM-IV (American Psychiatric Association [APA], 1994) the disorder is called Reading Disorder and it is part of the section of ‘Learning Disorders’, while in ICD-10 (World Health Organization [WHO], 1992) Specific reading disorder is one of the subcategories of the section ‘Specific developmental disorders of scholastic skills’. Throughout this chapter I will use the term Specific reading disorder (SRD), and we treat this term as synonymous with concepts such as dyslexia or learning disabilities.