It has been estimated that five to nine percent of school-aged children are diagnosed with dyslexia, and even adult skilled readers can experience debilitating reading impairments as a result of brain injury or disease. Many hypotheses have been proposed to explain the perceptual or cognitive dysfunctions that may underlie dyslexia, but one that has been particularly influential over the past thirty years or so is the phonological deficit hypothesis. This hypothesis states that reading deficits can often be linked to underlying problems in the way that the sound system of a reader's language is represented and processed in the brain. However, new evidence from genetics and brain imaging has come to light in recent years, and new phonological theories have been developed. With support of the National Science Foundation, a satellite conference will be held in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading to critically examine the phonological deficit hypothesis in light of new theory and evidence. An international group of leaders in the field will discuss whether the hypothesis has stood the test of time, and how it might change as research continues to advance our understanding of reading deficits.
