Researchers say that people with Developmental Dyslexia have certain strengths when it comes to exploring the unknown that has helped our species adapt and survive.
Researchers at Cambridge who studied how the brain works, how people think, and how they act came to the conclusion that people with dyslexia are best suited to explore the unknown. This is likely to be a very important part of how people adjust to changing environments.
They argue that this exploratory bias is essential to human survival and it has an evolutionary origin.
These results, which were consistent across visual processing, memory, and degrees of analysis, support the researchers’ claim that our understanding of dyslexia as a neurological illness needs to be revised.
According to lead author Dr. Helen Taylor, the findings, which were published today in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, have implications for both individuals and society.
Taylor said: “the deficit-centred view of dyslexia isn’t telling the whole story.”
This study suggests a fresh framework to help us comprehend the cognitive advantages of dyslexics.
“We believe that the areas of difficulty experienced by people with dyslexia result from a cognitive trade-off between exploration of new information and exploitation of existing knowledge,” she continued, “with the upside being an explorative bias that could explain enhanced abilities observed in certain realms like discovery, invention and creativity.”
This is the first time studies on dyslexia have been analyzed utilizing a multidisciplinary approach from an evolutionary perspective.
“Schools, academic institutes and workplaces are not designed to make the most of explorative learning. But we urgently need to start nurturing this way of thinking to allow humanity to continue to adapt and solve key challenges,” according to Taylor.
Up to 20% of the population has dyslexia, and this number is consistent across countries, cultures, and geographic regions. It is described as “a disorder in children who, despite conventional classroom experience, fail to attain the language skills of reading, writing and spelling commensurate with their intellectual abilities” by the World Federation of Neurology.
The new research is explained within the context of ‘Complementary Cognition,’ a theory that proposes our predecessors evolved to specialize in diverse, but complementary, modes of thinking, which promotes human adaptability through collaboration.
These cognitive specializations have their roots in the well-known trade-off between the pursuit of new knowledge and the use of what is already known. For instance, if you consume all of your food supply, you run the danger of going hungry later. But if you spend all your time looking for food, you waste energy you don’t need to waste. We must balance our desire to use known resources for survival with our drive to seek new resources, just like in any complex system.
“Striking the balance between exploring for new opportunities and exploiting the benefits of a particular choice is key to adaptation and survival and underpins many of the decisions we make in our daily lives,” Taylor added.
Experimentation, discovery, and innovation are all examples of exploratory endeavors. When it comes to exploitation, however, the focus is on making use of what has already been discovered, such as through the processes of refinement, efficiency, and selection.
“Considering this trade-off, an explorative specialisation in people with dyslexia could help explain why they have difficulties with tasks related to exploitation, such as reading and writing.”
“It could also explain why people with dyslexia appear to gravitate towards certain professions that require exploration-related abilities, such as arts, architecture, engineering, and entrepreneurship,” according to the author.
The researchers discovered that their findings were consistent with information from other disciplines of study. For instance, the fact that such a sizable fraction of the population has an explorative bias suggests that our species developed during a time of significant flux and uncertainty. This is consistent with research in the field of paleoarchaeology, which shows that tremendous climatic and environmental instability over a period of hundreds of thousands of years impacted the course of human evolution.
The researchers emphasize that cooperation between people with various talents could contribute to the explanation of our species’ unique capacity for adaptation.
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