Are Dyslexic People more Creative? Myth or Reality: A Meta-analysis / ¿Son las personas disléxicas más creativas? Mito o realidad: metaanálisis

The claim that people with dyslexia are more creative than people without this learning disorder is widespread. But the complexity of creativity and the way it is measured means that this statement is sometimes inconsistent. The aim of this review is, on the one hand, to explore the relationship between dyslexia and creativity, as well as to analyze the categories of divergent thinking: fluency, originality, abstractness, elaboration, and flexibility. On the other hand, it also aims to identify moderators that may be influencing this relationship, such as age, country, or the test used. We retrieved 13 empirical studies that provided 39 effect sizes. The results show that there are no significant differences between people with and without dyslexia in terms of creativity when considering the construct as a whole. However, a significant relationship between the two constructs is observed when analyzing the categories of divergent thinking isolated.(AU)

La afirmación de que las personas con dislexia son más creativas que las personas sin este trastorno específico del aprendizaje está muy extendida. Pero la complejidad del constructo de creatividad y la forma en que esta se mide, hace que esta afirmación sea contradictoria. El objetivo de esta revisión es doble; por un lado, pretende explorar la relación entre dislexia y creatividad, así como analizar las categorías del pensamiento divergente: fluidez, originalidad, abstracción, elaboración y flexibilidad; por otro, pretende identificar moderadores que puedan estar influyendo en esta relación, como la edad, el país o la prueba utilizada. Se recuperaron trece estudios empíricos, con un total de 39 tamaños de efecto. Los resultados muestran que no existen diferencias significativas en cuanto a la creatividad entre personas con dislexia y sin ella cuando se considera el constructo como un todo. Sin embargo, se observa una relación significativa entre ambos al analizar las categorías de pensamiento divergente de forma aislada.(AU)

Reading without phonology: ERP evidence from skilled deaf readers of Spanish.

Reading typically involves phonological mediation, especially for transparent orthographies with a regular letter to sound correspondence. In this study we ask whether phonological coding is a necessary part of the reading process by examining prelingually deaf individuals who are skilled readers of Spanish. We conducted two EEG experiments exploiting the pseudohomophone effect, in which nonwords that sound like words elicit phonological encoding during reading. The first, a semantic categorization task with masked priming, resulted in modulation of the N250 by pseudohomophone primes in hearing but not in deaf readers. The second, a lexical decision task, confirmed the pattern: hearing readers had increased errors and an attenuated N400 response for pseudohomophones compared to control pseudowords, whereas deaf readers did not treat pseudohomophones any differently from pseudowords, either behaviourally or in the ERP response. These results offer converging evidence that skilled deaf readers do not rely on phonological coding during visual word recognition. Furthermore, the finding demonstrates that reading can take place in the absence of phonological activation, and we speculate about the alternative mechanisms that allow these deaf individuals to read competently.

Phonological and orthographic coding in deaf skilled readers.

Written language is very important in daily life. However, most deaf people do not achieve good reading levels compared to their hearing peers. Previous research has mainly focused on their difficulties when reading in a language with an opaque orthography such as English. In the present study, we investigated visual word recognition of deaf adult skilled readers while reading in Spanish, a language with a transparent orthography, for which obligatory phonological mediation has been claimed. Experiment 1 showed a pseudohomophone inhibitory effect in hearing but not in deaf people. Experiment 2 showed similar orthographic sensitivity, as measured by the transposed-letter effect, for both groups. These results suggest that deaf skilled readers do not rely on phonological mediation, while maintaining the same level of orthographic sensitivity as hearing readers, thus suggesting that the use of phonological coding is not required to access the lexicon and meaning in a language with a transparent orthography.