Dyslexia a condition? It’s actually an evolutionary force, says this scientist

Dyslexia is a cognitive force, says social scientist Helen Taylor. According to her, he made possible the successful evolution of man.

Anyone who talks or writes about dyslexia is usually talking about a condition or at least a problem. But that’s not the case at all, says British sociologist Helen Taylor: “It’s not a disease or a disorder, but a different form of cognition.”

“It can manifest as reading difficulties, but dyslexia was around long before reading and writing became common. It’s also quite common: 5-20% of a population is dyslexic. And that’s the case everywhere in the world, we see it in all cultures.Moreover, dyslexia is largely genetic and therefore hereditary.

These are reasons for Taylor to look at dyslexia with an evolutionary eye. “It was clear that dyslexics can have special talents. You will find dyslexics among famous scientists, artists, architects, engineers. There is a well-known story of a man, Marc Rowe, who barely passed his exams, but got a scholarship, and is now a brilliant surgeon. And why is it shiny? Because before an operation he visualizes all the possible ways to carry it out. Dyslexics are good at this global thinking, seeing the big picture. »

Explore new possibilities

It is a cognitive power. And this is compensated by a cognitive weakness: the attention to detail, the here and now, the fine print. This cognitive strength versus cognitive weakness is a fundamental pattern in biology, Taylor says. “We call it the balance between exploitation and exploration, use and exploration. Every living system is looking – for a mate, for food, etc. – and he always has to make a compromise between exploiting familiar territory and exploring something new. This also applies to memory and knowledge: you can build on the knowledge you already have or look for new ideas. This basic understanding of research and the trade-off between exploration and exploitation provided me with a framework for understanding the cognitive differences between people.

Dyslexics are good at exploration, exploring new possibilities. They have a spatial vision, can think abstractly and are inventive. Taylor: “These qualities have been seen, but they have never been brought together in a good relationship. It is a scale: there are living beings, animals or humans, who can use an existing space very effectively and draw they are on the other side of the scale, they are local thinkers. Dyslexics are global thinkers. And just about everyone falls somewhere on that scale between the two extremes. One could say that dyslexics are specialists in exploration.

Division of labor

Dyslexia didn’t appear because something was wrong, but because something was needed, Taylor explains. The period in which modern man began his evolution, around 300,000 years ago, was very changeable. So unstable that people who were only good at exploiting familiar territory would struggle to survive. In changing circumstances, you need exploratory talents. And the individual man cannot be both at the same time.

Taylor: “Your brain capacity is limited and it costs energy if you, as an individual, have to constantly switch from one strategy to another. At some point, it will become more economical to opt for a particular specialization and start working with specialists in the other field. Specialization and collaboration increase the capabilities of the brain by creating a collective brain.

This is what Taylor calls “the evolution of complementary cognition”. A form of division of labour. You see the division of labor and specialization not only in humans, but also, for example, in socially living insects. While part of the bee population concentrates on the care of the hive and the offspring, another part on the search for (new) food sources. And biologists have determined that these scouts, these exploration specialists, represent 5 to 20% of the bee population. Just as much as we encounter dyslexics among people.

Being stuck in the education system

There has been an evolutionary push to bring about this division of labor. Taylor: “We needed that diversity to survive in changing conditions.”

And again, because even now the circumstances are threatening and changing. Taylor has already received interested responses from scientists working on climate change. “People with a global perspective can reason well about complex systems, like the climate. They are good at predicting and understanding different scenarios. This is very important in the evolution of systems.

This seems logical, but is not recognized in today’s society. The educational system is mainly aimed at the exploitation, the assimilation of existing knowledge according to established rules, and not at the creative exploration of new possibilities.

Taylor: “In principle, that was not the intention at all, but the education system has become that way. It has swung to the side of knowledge exploitation. This makes it difficult for dyslexics to fully utilize their talents. You still feel like the lesser is bad. Many dyslexics have problems. Dyslexics are overrepresented in prisons. Stop pushing people in the wrong direction. To see their talents. We desperately need it. »

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