Dyslexia and Specific Learning Disorders: New International Diagnostic Criteria

PETRETTO, DONATELLA RITA;MASALA, CARMELO

2017-01-01

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Abstract

Dyslexia is the most studied and the most known Learning disorder in the world but there is only a relative agreement on the definition and on the diagnostic criteria used in clinical and research fields. Dyslexia refers mainly to the difficulties in learning to read and, even if it is generally diagnosed in the first years of schooling, it can have different clinical manifestations in different phases of life and it can also influence different dominions of life. In this editorial we will describe and analyze some recent findings in this field, also deriving from the change of diagnostic criteria proposed in 2013 by the American Psychiatric Association in DSM-5 that has led to an increase in the number of students that meet diagnostic criteria and that has led to an increase of the level of the heterogeneity of their functional profiles. Then, we will discuss some issues for future researches mainly in the field of psychometric assessment, neuropsychological assessment and specific interventions.