Self-reported symptoms of developmental dyslexia predict impairments in everyday cognition in adults

Research into the impact of dyslexia on everyday cognition in adults with dyslexia is relatively limited and has tended to focus on university students.

The present online study aimed to add to this small corpus by investigating the everyday effects of dyslexia on memory and attention in a larger community-based sample. One hundred and seventy-two adult volunteers completed five well-established self-report questionnaires, assessing dyslexia and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder symptomatology and everyday experiences with memory, attention, and mind-wandering.

After controlling for ADHD symptomatology, hierarchical regression analyses revealed that higher levels of dyslexia-related symptomatology were associated with greater, more frequent everyday memory and attentional problems, but not with a greater propensity to mind-wandering. Increased levels of dyslexia symptomatology were positively associated with the frequency of both everyday attentional lapses (at least when performing a pair of tasks or easy tasks while inhibiting intervening stimuli) and everyday memory failures. No significant associations were found between dyslexia symptomatology and attentional lapses when performing difficult tasks in the presence of concurrent stimuli or between dyslexia symptomatology and the propensity to mind-wandering.

Dyslexia symptomatology was perceived as being associated with more everyday memory and attention problems in adulthood. Adjustments to educational and workplace settings and interventions to compensate for these difficulties are proposed.