The most important—and most common—trade-off is reflected in the following comment: “Sammy never remembers anything from school. He forgets what’s been taught, and whether there’s an assignment or a test. And when we ask him to do something at home, it’s always in one ear and out the other. His memory is horrible! Only, the strange thing is, Sammy’s also our family historian. He can remember what we’ve done on every vacation, and who gave what present at his brother’s birthday party five years ago, and what kind of pet every kid in his class has. So why can he remember all those kinds of things but he can’t remember his times tables or the names of the state capitals?” This classic, but seemingly paradoxical, description of the “family historian with the poor memory” is one we hear from countless families. It becomes easier to understand when you remember the different types of memory we described at the start of the previous chapter. All individuals, whether dyslexic or not, show a distinctive blend of strengths and weaknesses in episodic, semantic, and procedural memory, and this blend greatly affects their learning and memory styles.
What do You think about The Dyslexic Advantage (2011)?
