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The Validity of the Category of Specific Developmental Reading Disorder

  • Chapter
Perspectives on the Classification of Specific Developmental Disorders

Part of the book series: Neuropsychology and Cognition ((NPCO,volume 13))

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.

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Authors
  1. Jan Rispens
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. of Educational Sciences, Utrecht University, P.O. Box 80140, 3508 TC, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Jan Rispens

  2. Netherlands Institute of Care and Welfare, P.O. Box 19152, 3501 DD, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Tom A. van Yperen

  3. University of London, UK

    William Yule

  4. Dept. of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry, De Crespigny Park, SE5 8AF, London, UK

    William Yule

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Rispens, J. (1998). The Validity of the Category of Specific Developmental Reading Disorder. In: Rispens, J., van Yperen, T.A., Yule, W. (eds) Perspectives on the Classification of Specific Developmental Disorders. Neuropsychology and Cognition, vol 13. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2581-1_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2581-1_4

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-90-481-4961-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-017-2581-1

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