The Dyslexic Advantage (9 page)

An even more direct link between dyslexia and high M-strength occupations is provided by several studies demonstrating that individuals with dyslexia are significantly overrepresented in training programs for highly spatial professions like art, design, and engineering. In the United Kingdom, where only about 4 percent of the population are considered severely dyslexic and another 6 percent moderately dyslexic, a study at the Royal College of Art found that fully 10 percent of its students showed severe dyslexic findings, and 25 percent at least moderate findings—
more than double the rates in the general population
.
⁶
At the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London, psychologist Dr. Beverly Steffert found that more than 30 percent of the 360 students she tested showed evidence of dyslexia-related difficulties with either reading, spelling, or written syntax.
⁷
Another student survey at the Harper Adams University College in England showed that 26 percent of the first-year engineering students were significantly dyslexic—more than double the rate of the university's student body as a whole.
⁸
In Sweden, researchers Ulrika Wolff and Ingvar Lundberg compared the incidence of dyslexia in university students majoring in fine arts and photography with a control group of students studying economics and commercial law. They found that the art students showed nearly three times the incidence of dyslexia than among either the control students or the general population.
⁹

While formal studies on the incidence of dyslexia among fully qualified professionals in these fields are lacking, there is no shortage of “occupational lore” in many high M-strength fields about the close connection between dyslexia and spatial ability. In his book
Thinking Like Einstein
, author Thomas G. West recounts his conversation with dyslexic computer graphic artist Valerie Delahaye, who specializes in creating computer graphic simulations for movies. Delahaye told him that at least half the graphic artists she's worked with on major projects like
Titanic
and
The Fifth Element
were also dyslexic. West also quotes MIT Media Lab founder and dyslexic Nicholas Negroponte as stating that dyslexia is so common at MIT that it's known locally as the “MIT disease.”
¹⁰
Tufts University psychologist Dr. Maryanne Wolf has written that spelling difficulties are so widespread at the architectural firm where her brother-in-law works that they've instituted a rule that all architects must have their outgoing letters spell-checked—twice.
¹¹
And author Lesley Jackson wrote in the design industry trade journal
Icon Magazine Online
, “Having met so many dyslexic designers over the years, I've become convinced there must be some kind of link between the underlying processes of design creativity and the workings of the dyslexic mind.”
¹²

Many dyslexia experts have also gone on record with their own observations regarding the links between spatial ability and dyslexia. Dr. Norman Geschwind wrote, “It has become increasingly clear in recent years that individuals with dyslexia themselves are frequently endowed with high talents in many areas. . . . There have been in recent years an increasing number of studies that have pointed out that many individuals with dyslexia have superior talents in certain areas of non-verbal skill, such as art, architecture, [and] engineering. . . .”
¹³
Eminent British neurologist Macdonald Critchley, who personally examined more than 1,300 patients with dyslexia, stated that “a great many” of these patients had shown special talents in spatial, mechanical, artistic, and manual pursuits, and that they frequently pursued occupations that made use of these abilities.
¹⁴
We could easily cite many more such observations.

There are two key components to exceptional M-strengths. The first is an imagery system that can stably store and accurately display spatial information in a mental spatial matrix. The second is skill in manipulating these mental images by rotating, repositioning, moving, or modifying them, or by making them interact or combine with other mental images.

Recently, researchers at the University College of London have discovered a set of specialized cells in the brain's hippocampus (a complex structure at the base of the brain whose two seahorse-shaped lobes play many key roles in memory formation and spatial processing) that appear to be responsible for creating the brain's mental matrix, or 3-D spatial lattice.
¹⁵
They've named these cells “grid cells” because together they create a matrix of reference vectors that act like coordinate lines on a 3-D map.
¹⁶

If it helps, you can picture these intersecting vectors as the bars of an infinite jungle gym. This spatial matrix allows us to plot information about where objects are in space—much like a 3-D GPS navigation system. This mental spatial coordinate system can help us interact with the real world, determining where we are in relation to other objects, or the sizes and shapes of those objects, or whether and how these objects are moving or changing in orientation. It can also help us reason about imaginary spatial environments or objects.

As we saw above, to be useful for real-world spatial reasoning, our spatial imagery must form a continuous 3-D web of interconnected perspectives. A simple “photographic snapshot”—no matter how vivid or detailed—is of limited use if it can't be manipulated or connected with other views and perspectives. The spatial coordinate system created by the grid cells helps—in cooperation with other functional centers of the brain—to tie these perspectives together.

This spatial information can be presented or “displayed” to the mind as various forms of
spatial imagery
. The most obvious form of spatial imagery is visual.

An excellent example of a dyslexic individual with impressive M-strengths and a remarkably clear and lifelike visual display of spatial imagery is Canadian entrepreneur Glenn Bailey. After academic problems caused him to drop out of school, Glenn became a highly successful businessman. One of his many successful ventures has been the development and construction of residential real estate. Glenn described for us how his ability to generate and voluntarily manipulate vivid, lifelike, 3-D visual imagery often helps him in this business. “When I see a property I can instantly construct a new house on it. I can see exactly how that house is going to look, and I can walk through every room in that house, and out into the garden, and everywhere. I can turn those thoughts into reality. And that's how my development company was created for high-end houses. Even right now, sitting here, I can do a detailed walkthrough in my mind of every house and property we've ever built.”

Although stories like Glenn's might cause us to assume that strong visual imagery is essential for spatial reasoning, the experience of “MX” shows clearly that this assumption is false. MX was a retired building surveyor living in Scotland who'd always enjoyed a remarkably vivid and lifelike visual imagery system, or “mind's eye.” Unfortunately, four days after undergoing a cardiac procedure MX awoke to discover that though his vision was normal, when he closed his eyes he could no longer voluntarily call to mind any visual images at all.
¹⁷

MX was tested using a whole series of spatial reasoning and visual memory tasks. As a control, a group of high-visualizing architects performed the same tasks. Surprisingly, it was found that although MX could no longer create any mental visual images while performing these tasks, he scored just as well as the architects did. As he performed the tasks, MX's brain was also scanned with fMRI technology. In contrast to the architects, who heavily activated the visual centers of their brains while solving these tasks, MX used none of his brain's visual processing regions.

These studies suggested that while MX had lost his ability to
perceive visual images
when engaging in spatial reasoning, he could still
access spatial information
from his spatial database and apply it to Material reasoning tasks with no detectible loss of skill. In other words, MX had gone quite literally overnight from having remarkably vivid visual imagery to having none at all, without any apparent loss in his spatial imagery abilities. This is a dramatic demonstration of the difference between spatial reasoning and visual imagery.

Spatial imagery can actually be perceived in many ways besides clear, lifelike visual forms. As long as the hippocampus can create its spatial grid from information gathered through the senses, it seems relatively unimportant what form of imagery the individual uses to “read” or access this information. Think, for example, of a blind person who recalls the contours of a friend's face: this spatial information is recalled in a nonvisual form, as a form of tactile or “muscular” (
somatosensory
) imagery, yet it can be every bit as accurate and detailed as visual imagery.

We can also demonstrate the variety of useful spatial imagery styles by examining what other individuals with dyslexia with impressive M-strengths have said about their own forms of spatial imagery. Let's start with legendary physicist Albert Einstein.

In addition to having remarkable M-strengths, Einstein showed many dyslexia-related challenges, such as late-talking, difficulty learning to read, poor rote memory for math facts, and lifelong difficulty with spelling. Einstein described his own spatial imagery in the following way: “The words of the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The psychical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images which can be ‘voluntarily' reproduced and combined.”
¹⁸

This kind of abstract imagery is especially common among spatially talented physicists and mathematicians, for whom the flexibility of such imagery seems to be particularly valuable. Dyslexic mathematician Kalvis Jansons, a professor at University College in London, has written, “To me,
abstract pictures and diagrams
feel more important than words. . . . Many of my original mathematical ideas began with some form of visualization.”
¹⁹

Jansons has also described experiencing spatial imagery in a completely nonvisual form—as feelings of movement, force, texture, shape, or other kinds of tactile or motor images: “It would be a mistake to believe . . . that non-verbal [spatial] reasoning has to involve pictures. For example, three-dimensional space can be equally well represented in what I often think of as a tactile world.”
²⁰
Jansons has employed this “tactile” spatial imagery in his professional work by using knots to study important principles of probability.

Dr. Matthew Schneps of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics shared with us a related form of spatial imagery. Matt is an astrophysicist, an award-winning documentary filmmaker, and an individual with dyslexia. Matt described his spatial imagery to us as consisting of a feeling of movement or process—rather like a machine at work. When pursuing an idea or hypothesis, Matt sometimes feels like he's activating a lever in a machine he imagines in space, in order to turn a series of gears and observe how the spatial map changes as he tests various configurations.

Dyslexic attorney David Schoenbrod described to us still another type of nonvisual spatial imagery. David is Trustee Professor of Law at New York Law School, a pioneer in the field of environmental law, and a key litigator in some of the most important environmental cases of the last fifty years, including the landmark lawsuits that led to the removal of lead from gasoline. He is also a talented sculptor, architect, landscape designer, and builder. David described his spatial imagery to us as a strong sense of spatial position unaccompanied by clear visual images: “In recalling autobiographical stories I recall spatial arrangements in some detail—like the layout of the room, the arrangement of the furniture, where the other people and I were, and the ordination to the points of the compass—but this recollection is neither lifelike nor schematic, but rather in grayscale, and almost vanishingly faint. In general, I know the shape of things, but I don't really see them. It strikes me that the fact that I see form more than color is why I have been more attracted to sculpting than painting.”

We've described these different forms of spatial imagery in some detail because we too often meet educators and individuals with dyslexia who believe that lifelike visual imagery is the key to spatial reasoning. As a result, they often overlook the value of other forms of spatial imagery. In truth, it doesn't seem to matter much whether your mental imagery is lifelike and visual or whether it is abstract, positional, or movement or touch related. So long as you can use this imagery to understand spatial relationships, you can use it to make important comparisons and predictions, or to combine, change, or manipulate spatial data in various ways. The ability to reason spatially is highly valuable for many tasks and professions, and individuals with dyslexia are often blessed with prominent M-strengths. However, as we'll discuss in the next chapter, M-strengths often come with several trade-offs.

Trade-offs with M-Strengths

T
wo recurring themes in this book are, first, dyslexic advantages arise from variations in brain structure that have been selected for their benefit, and, second, these variations also bring “flip-side” trade-offs that can make certain tasks more difficult. As you'll see, each of the MIND strengths has its own set of trade-offs, and M-strengths are no exception. We've seen one trade-off already, and that's relative weakness in certain 2-D processing skills. While this weakness is of little consequence for most day-to-day functions, there's one area where it can create important problems: symbol reversals while reading or writing.