Curing dyslexia and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder by training motor co-ordination: miracle or myth?

Abstract

Dore Achievement Centres are springing up world-wide with a mission to cure cerebellar developmental delay, thought to be the cause of dyslexia, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, dyspraxia and Asperger's syndrome. Remarkable success is claimed for an exercise-based treatment that is designed to accelerate cerebellar development. Unfortunately, the published studies are seriously flawed. On measures where control data are available, there is no credible evidence of significant gains in literacy associated with this intervention. There are no published studies on efficacy with the clinical groups for whom the programme is advocated. It is important that family practitioners and paediatricians are aware that the claims made for this expensive treatment are misleading.

Fig. 1

Mean percentile scores on literacy measures from Dyslexia Screening Test for treated and control children from Reynolds et al. Standard errors were not provided by the authors. Significant interactions between group and pre-/post-test were found only for word reading, where Treated group had lower scores on pre-test. (□) Pre-test, (■) post-test.