Dyslexia: learning disability or brain in explorer mode?

Science is not neutral. To start there is to remember that what we commonly call scientific facts are always dependent on a certain theoretical basis which is generally not without bias. This is particularly the case in the field of health and in the more or less porous border which separates the normal from the pathological. During this article, we will see that by changing the theoretical framework, we can have a radically different vision of what our society currently considers to be a learning disability.

A reductive view of dyslexia

So far, research has only focused on the lexical difficulties of people with dyslexia. However, several observations suggest that people with dyslexia have above-average abilities in certain non-verbal tasks. The question that then arises is: dyslexia is it only a disorder or can it be considered otherwise? This is what the authors wonder of the article published in Frontiers in Psychology. To answer their questions, they will once again analyze the literature on dyslexia under the lens from another theoretical framework than that which considers dyslexia in relation to a learning norm: that of cognitive research by arming itself with the theory of the “exploitation – exploration” compromise and the evolutionary theory of complementary cognition.

In a few words, exploitation – exploration trade-off theory considers that at all levels (individual and collective) and in all spaces (physical and mental) we are constantly faced with a dilemma between exploiting resources or exploring the environment to seek new opportunities. Consider the archetypal example of food resources: I must individually or collectively exploit the resources that are in my environment to survive and for this I must exploit skills that are in my memory. But in anticipation of the probable lack of resources, I must also go explore my environment and before that, explore my memory to know where it is better for me to go to have the best chance of finding other resources. This is a problem that arises in many scientific disciplines including medical research, IT or even marketing.

That of complementary cognition maintains that the members of our species are individually specialized in different neurocognitive research strategies. This implies that our cognitive faculties (high or low level) are preferentially oriented towards exploitation or exploration. It is characterized as complementary since if we constantly exploit or conversely explore without ever exploiting, these are not viable strategies. Therefore, according to this theory, we regulate adaptations by matter of cognitive research at the individual level to serve the group. In other words, individual cognitions complement each other so that cooperation at the group level is optimal and it can survive in a changing environment. That being said, let’s see how the empirical data can give rise to a new interpretation of dyslexia.

Dyslexia: cognition in explorer mode

The researchers’ analysis suggests that the search cognitive capacity of people with dyslexia may be specialized in exploration and they have several empirical arguments to support their hypothesis.

• Visual and auditory abilities

In visual tasks, dyslexic people are much quicker to see what is wrong at the global level than non-dyslexic people. In this famous lithography by Dutch artist Maurits Cornelis Escher which is locally coherent but globally unrealistic, dyslexic people will be much quicker than others to understand that the waterfall is impossible. This suggests that he immediately focused on the overall coherence of the drawing rather than fixing the local aspects of it. However, they tend to explore rather than exploit the information presented to them.

Few studies have been conducted on the comparison of certain auditory tasks between dyslexic and non-dyslexic people. One of the few studies available on the subject suggests that during an auditory task consisting of listening to a speech, the performances of the two groups are similar when there is no interference or a slight non-linguistic noise. On the other hand, the performance of dyslexic people collapses when discussions are added in the background of the speech. This suggests that their cognition fails to discredit peripheral discussions. This would be consistent with the exploration specialization.

• Memory capacities

Concerning memory, the theoretical framework of the exploration-exploitation compromise can explain the difficulties in terms of procedural memory. Procedural memory is the long-term retention of non-conscious knowledge that automates tasks. It is at the origin of the achievement of the majority of sequential motor and cognitive skills (cycling, to play an instrument or learning to read) and mainly allows information to be used. In dyslexic individuals, there is generally a lower ability to automate tasks. Nevertheless, the counterpart of this is that they retain declarative awareness of the process of what they are learning. In other words, they will certainly find it much more difficult to automate but will be able to guide the group towards learning new, more efficient methods for carrying out a task where a person specialized in exploitation will be rather inclined to maintain their cognitive habits.

According to certain theories of the encoding of mnesic information (i.e. relating to memory), we store information in two distinct parts: the essential and the verbatim (this theory is called the theory of fuzzy trace and I already told you about it in This article). The verbatim is the precise information that a person has given us ready to be used, while the essential is very partial information that can be used in different contexts to guide intuition and promote exploration. Dyslexic people seem to have better abilities than others to remember the essentials. This is particularly highlighted in experiments where researchers ask participants to remember a sentence: dyslexic people use many more synonyms than others to succeed in the task. Where most people are content to exploit the information given to them, dyslexic people, starting from the essential data of the problem, that is to say the semantics of the word used, explore in their memory to find a solution, namely a synonym.

On the side of Memory declarative which is divided into two parts (the semantic memory which concerns the raw facts and the episodic memory concerning the contextual elements associated with these facts), dyslexic people would be more efficient in the use of episodic memory, still in a similar logic: raw knowledge is generally a matter of exploitation while the context and the different information they contain will facilitate exploration. In the same way, this reasoning would also explain why dyslexic individuals have poorer performance in terms of working memory.

Dyslexic people also have a thought that is characterized divergent, that is to say that they have an ability to reason outside the restricted frameworks that were provided to them at first glance. This allows them to generate new ideas, new frameworks for thinking, to connect elements of knowledge a priori distant from each other, to get off the beaten track more easily than the others. This is an asset in terms of creativity or resolution problems that do not yet have clear solutions.

The social implications of this paradigm

It should be noted that all these differences are not systematic and that their degree may vary. It is therefore possible that a person with dyslexia does not have certain capacities described or that they are not as comfortable with exploration as is claimed. Nevertheless, the empirical data analyzed by the researchers suggests that there are good reasons to continue to explore this previously too little considered area.

What would be the educational implications if dyslexia as a cognitive specialization became the mainstream view? The authors briefly develop this point in their article. They start from the observation that the current reliance on reading and writing for learning and communication presents problems for people whose cognitive abilities favor exploration. The education system, for the most part, leaves little room for exploration and focuses preferentially on the acquisition of knowledge. That being the case, it is not surprising, from the authors’ point of view, that people with an exploratory mode of cognition have difficulty in academic environments. The activities that are mainly developed there and the assessments of knowledge highlight their cognitive “weakness”. At the same time, too little time is devoted to letting them express and develop their strengths, which can ultimately generate frustration, stress and anxiety.

According to the authors, the education system should gradually leave more room for exploration. This does not mean that exploitation should be left aside, but that there is a balance to be found. Above all, exploratory learning techniques exist. It is these techniques that are also used in the field of reinforcement learning algorithms. More broadly, the authors suggest that if their theory is correct, there are wider implications for society as a whole. Assuming that human cognition adapts in a complementary way, combining information from different existing cognitive specializations could create mutually beneficial and synergistic effects. According to them, ” such collective intelligence could lie at the heart of our species’ exceptional adaptive capacity. Redesigning education systems and other cultural systems with this understanding can not only better serve individual achievement and self-esteem but can also be vital for society as a whole. “.