2023-06-16 20:01:16
The ability to read is a neurological puzzle. After all, until a few hundred years ago, the majority of the public did not know how to read at all, yet some of us learn to read in a way that seems quite natural, as if the brain has been adapted to the task since time immemorial. Others, who are the majority, will be able to learn to read if given the right instruction, while a third group will experience an ongoing challenge. Among these are 5% to 17% of the population (depending on how you count) suffering from dyslexia. This difficulty has a distinct genetic component, a fact that raises one of the questions that bothers researchers: why has this so-called “disadvantage” been preserved for years in human genetics and is it still so widespread?
Usually, survival advantages are attributed to a certain trait that is preserved in this way, and indeed, in recent years some researchers of dyslexia have begun to identify the advantages that come with it, even if not all of them have been proven to the end and the relationship between them has not been clarified. The research of Dr. Helen Taylor, from the Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Strathclyde in the UK and the Macdonald Institute for Archaeological Research, affiliated with the University of Cambridge, tries to put the pieces of the puzzle together.
Dr. Helen Taylor / Photo: YouTube
Taylor developed a theory that links the various advantages people with dyslexia have to explain what is unique, and in some ways even enhanced, about their way of thinking. But that’s not all. Together with her colleague, Dr. Martin Westergaard of the University of Cambridge, she published a paper proposing a theory of a “collective mind,” which includes specific minds with different kinds of abilities.
In a conversation with “Globes”, she explains why human society cannot give up any of these abilities. More than that, she claims that if society continues to exclude people with dyslexia from senior positions, humanity will significantly limit its ability to survive the changes that lie ahead.
Knowledge is necessary for survival
What about archeology and the study of dyslexia? Unsurprisingly, Taylor is dyslexic herself, but she managed to overcome the difficulties and stigmas involved, and arrived at the prestigious UCL University in London. After completing her degree in archaeology, she joined a research expedition to the Nuba Mountains in Sudan, where marginalized or persecuted factions from many African societies have fled over the years, because of the survival advantages the mountains provide. Therefore, a variety of different societies developed in them, both in their social structure and in their use of language.
Dr. Helen Taylor
personal: BA and MA in archeology and PhD from Cambridge University on the history of the complexity of human society
Current role: Researcher at the Institute of Terrorism and Entrepreneurship at the University of Strathclyde, and affiliated researcher at the Institute of Archeology at the University of Cambridge
Something else: As part of her work as an archaeologist, she participated in field projects in Iran, Sudan and Azerbaijan. And yes, she has dyslexia
The encounter with this diversity planted in Taylor the idea of what became her doctorate: the thought that human evolution means not only the survival of the individuals best suited to the environment, but the survival of individuals adapted to certain roles in society. These individuals alone might not have been able to thrive, but they are useful for the survival of the entire group, and therefore precisely in human society, these specializations are preserved from generation to generation. Her research was praised for its originality, alongside its deep anchoring in archaeological information from the field.
Her next step was to hone in on the fact that one of these special abilities that help the group thrive might be the same syndrome we call dyslexia today.
How do you define dyslexia today? Has the definition changed over the years?
“In 1968, the World Association of Neurologists defined dyslexics as ‘children who, despite conventional training, fail to achieve abilities in reading, writing and spelling that match their other intellectual abilities.’ Over the years, the definition has changed to focus on errors in word recognition and spelling, but it is still a difficulty-based definition , and not very different from the original definition.
“However, since the sixties of the last century, researchers have noticed that dyslexic children have other characteristics, some also strengths.”
This also happened to other thinking patterns, which were previously considered pathological, such as attention deficit disorder or autism.
“Indeed, other neurological conditions have been identified as a ‘difference’ and not just a ‘failure’, but with regard to dyslexia, this evidence remains controversial, because most of the strengths characteristic of dyslexics are those that are difficult to precisely define or quantify. We are actually the first group of researchers to propose an evolutionary mechanism that can explain Why did dyslexia develop as an advantage? The thread connecting these abilities is what we called ‘global exploratory learning’.”
What does this actually mean?
“To explain this, one must understand what is so special about learning, and specifically about the learning of humans. What is the uniqueness of the human race, which allowed it to reach where it has reached in the world. The uniqueness that is accepted today to talk about is ‘cultural adaptations’, that is, we do not fit physically ourselves to our environment, but adapt our knowledge to the environment. We learn from previous generations, for example, where to find food, how to produce it successfully, how to transform raw material in our environment into something that will warm us or heal us. Technology is actually a cultural adaptation, because it based on knowledge.
“If I throw you now into the North Pole, you will not survive there for long, compared to a native of the place. Physically, you and an Inuit person are not so different, and you will also be able to survive if you learn from him everything he knows. For humans, knowledge is survival. An advantage in acquiring Knowledge is an evolutionary advantage.”
How do you get knowledge? Through learning, of course, says Taylor. “Humanity’s ‘patent’ is passing on the knowledge accumulated over generations, without necessarily having to acquire this knowledge directly from the world itself. It is the kind of knowledge we have in books, in classroom lessons. But when we want to improve the existing, or when the environment changes, we have to go back and learn from the world as well.
“The truth is that most human learning is integrated: learning from previous generations or from other people, and also learning from the world. We examine the knowledge we have received against the world, confirm it, make adjustments to our environment and our lives.”
3 abilities that studies have linked between them and dyslexia
1Higher resolution vision for objects that appeared in the periphery of the field of vision
2Construction and representation of the world around, better than the average population
3Thinking “outside the box”. In a “how many uses can you find for a box” creativity test, people with dyslexia do better on average
An advantage in a virtual environment
Both types of learning require resources of time and cognitive effort, which are limited in each person. That’s why they come at each other’s expense, says Taylor. The mix chosen depends on the challenges we face. In a new or unusual environment, we cannot use what we already know. The same is true when faced with an unusual task, or when we strive to improve the existing one.
“Even between people who are in the same situation, there are interpersonal differences in the way they learn. There are those who learn from the world just to slightly renovate their existing ideas, and others who really like to dive into completely new worlds for them and make a new integration.”
And did you find a connection between the second type of information processing and dyslexia? How did you test and prove such a thing?
“In the last decades, several researchers have found cognitive strengths in people with dyslexia. We combined these findings into an article, and showed how they are related to each other.”
Taylor claims that it is the ability to see the big or broad picture, which is expressed in different and complementary forms at different levels of information processing – from where dyslexics focus their gaze (the lowest level of processing) to their amazing ability in inventive thinking.
At a basic level, people with dyslexia had difficulty focusing the eye in the center of the visual field but seemed to see with higher resolution objects that appeared in the periphery of the visual field.
You see the big picture in the workplace
For Taylor it is important that employers also understand the potential of people with dyslexia in the workplace.
“A person with global research abilities should be the first to tackle any problem. After he has given his broad contribution, others can apply existing knowledge to address it without falling into the trap of narrow thinking,” she says. “Today we do see people with dyslexia as entrepreneurs, in business development, visionaries and even as CEOs – a position they can reach if they have received the right support throughout their lives.
“Dyslexics should be more represented in the fields of science, design, architecture – because of the ability to create models in their mind’s eye, and also because of the ability to understand complex systems and perceive them as more than the sum of their parts.”
So how can managers give them the right support?
“First of all, despite everything, they must understand that it will be more difficult for them to read long texts and write endless documents. On the positive side, it is important to allow them to express their ideas even if they seem strange at first. Because it will be difficult for them to carry the idea through to its implementation, due to the difficulty with Details, it’s important to assign them to someone who is more of a ‘corner close.” It’s important to make sure they get the credit as the originators of the idea and stay in the picture until the end, otherwise they may lose motivation very quickly.
“When teaching something new, don’t expect details. First of all explain the big picture, the connection with the past and the future, let them go back and forth through the material and try to answer their questions, even if they seem unrelated to the material being studied at the moment.”
At the level of integration of details from a picture, people with dyslexia were able to identify what was “impossible” in an illusory painting, for example MK Asher’s waterfall painting, faster than the general population. “We see this as a sign of a more global processing, because when you look at every detail in the picture, everything looks normal. To understand what is wrong, you have to see the whole picture,” says Taylor.
When we rise to the level of visual information representation in the brain and drawing conclusions, “we find that people with dyslexia probably know how to build and represent in their minds models of the world around them better than the average population. They seem to process the information in a more ‘top-down’ way. Already after receiving some details about their environment, they begin to model it for themselves and direct the continuation of their investigation so that they can fill in information gaps, using the method of building a prediction and confirming it. A good prediction comes from a good model.”
Thus, for example, in an experiment with teenagers with and without dyslexia, the participants had to navigate through a virtual environment and look for a toy car in it. They were then asked to reconstruct the environment from memory. When it came to a two-dimensional environment, both groups performed similarly. But in a 3D environment, the dyslexic youth did better. Taylor believes this happened thanks to the model they built in their mind’s eye.
If it is possible to build a model of what we have seen, it is also possible to build a model of what we have not seen, even of abstract ideas. Taylor recognizes in dyslexics an ability to better represent in the brain models of biological systems that they have never seen with the eye, of social networks, of abstract ideas.
The theory of the collective mind
All this is also expressed in differences in motor learning. “There is procedural learning, which is related to the transformation of motor abilities mainly into automatic ones, and therefore into speed. For example, when we ride a bicycle. People with dyslexia are a little less efficient in this type of learning, and it is more difficult for them to make not only reading and writing automatic, but also some of the physical abilities. But if we emphasize exploratory learning, perhaps it is better that the abilities are not too automatic. Perhaps it is good to maintain awareness, and thus perhaps even continue to improve. It is possible that what we see as ineffective learning is another kind of efficiency.”
At the highest level, this is thinking “outside the box”. For example, on a “how many uses can you find for a box” creativity test, people with dyslexia do better on average, consistently.
Taylor points out that even in studies that did not deal with dyslexia, it was actually found that those who know how to examine the space in a more proactive way are also more successful in coming up with unusual ideas. That is, not only does she say that there are “thinking styles” that manifest in similar directions at different information processing levels.
So what exactly was evolution trying to achieve, and why must the different modes of thought be at the expense of the other?
“My theory is this: Humans evolved in environments of great uncertainty. Humans seem to have adopted knowledge as their main survival tool, and at some point so much of it was required that it could not be held in one mind. The only way to continue to evolve and survive As a species, it was to delegate different learning powers to different parts of the group, then put all this knowledge together and survive as a group, that is, to create a kind of ‘collective brain’ that has a variety of abilities.”
Where does your research sit within the overall literature on neurodiversity, that is, the idea that there are all kinds of thinking and the less common types should not necessarily be cataloged as a disorder?
“Neurodiversity is the more familiar term. It was coined by Judy Singer in the 1990s, and ignited a significant social movement that raised questions about the positioning of any different way of thinking as a disorder.
“I agree with this idea. I think that dyslexia is a different way of thinking with advantages and disadvantages, and not just a disorder. But my theory is not a social movement but a scientific theory with scientific proofs, and it does not only deal with the fact that there are advantages to the dyslexic brain, but adds the idea The collective mind and the abilities that complement each other. If we give up one of them (eg by “curing” the disorder), we will have a negative effect
on the ability of the entire group to function.”
Don’t call them dyslexic
Taylor’s research is usually cited in the context of changing the attitude towards people with dyslexia and changing their attitude towards themselves, but Taylor is actually interested in the impact of the insights from the research on humanity as a whole, and the ability to extend the idea to other ‘atypical’ types of thinking, how they contribute to the great collective mind.
“Studies in the field of biology show that any species that begins to explore too little, that converges into a comfort zone, will later have a hard time surviving. This is especially true in environments where changes are rapid,” says Taylor. That’s why she’s worried. According to her, even today, when it is already clear that people with dyslexia do not fall short in their academic abilities compared to people who learned to read easily, they may still be labeled and relegated to less central jobs in society.
According to Taylor, not all people with dyslexia “realize their potential”. And if you are dyslexic who itches at the sound of these three words, you understand exactly what she is talking about.
When society, even if not on purpose, removes people with dyslexia from the centers of knowledge gathering and decision-making, we may lose that part of the collective brain that is necessary to deal with dramatic changes, such as those brought about by artificial intelligence. Precisely for a changing environment, Taylor claims, the cognitive abilities associated with dyslexia are most needed. The same goes for the climate crisis.
Can people without dyslexia also have these benefits?
“Yes, it’s a sequence, but it seems that the largest pool of this ability is found in dyslexics.”
Would you like dyslexia to get a new name?
“Yes. The difficulty is not the issue here, not the ‘dis’, but also not necessarily the vocabulary, the reading. I would call them ‘global researchers’.”
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