Dyslexia and classic pathognomic signs.

The classic pathognomic signs of dyslexia, such as reversals and rotations, appear to be associated with poor reading, not diagnosed developmental dyslexia. 26 8th and 9th grade dyslexia with poor perceptual/attentional ability were matched with 19 reading-retarded subjects with age-equivalent perceptual/attentional test scores for age, IQ, and degree of reading retardation and compared both with each other and with 96 adequate readers for reversals, rotations, insertions, substitutions, omissions, poor handwriting and visual ability on the Gray test, the WRAT Spelling Test, a writing task, and the star-tracing mirror test. On 46 of 49 variables, the dyslexia and retarded readers performed comparably. Together they made more classic errors and had lower achievement scores than the adequate readers on 44 of 49 variables. Classic errors clustered with poor reading but not diagnosed dyslexia. The hypothesis that reading acquisition trains perceptual test-taking ability is advanced.