> It isn't arbitrary, but the definition is so broad that it is almost meaningless. You are absolutely right, "arbitrary" wasn't really what I meant. > It isn

> It isn't arbitrary, but the definition is so broad that it is almost meaningless. You are absolutely right, "arbitrary" wasn't really what I meant. > It isn't even a category of disorders that are grouped by symptoms, they are grouped by how those symptoms manifest themselves when trying to read. Basically you have dyslexia if you have trouble reading or learning to read... Therefore the only real way to be misdiagnosed with it is if there is some other more specific undiagnosed disability that impacts intelligence... I've always been deeply suspicious of broad labelling through analysis of fairly non-specific cognitive symptoms. Even with the consideration you mention: excluding other physiological and neurological factors. Reading the various definitions of different forms of dyslexia now which suggest certain causes - I don't feel like any of them applied to me. I think the failure in these attempts of classifying neuro-type or whatever is the expectation for little variation, and I don't mean in terms of a so-called "spectrum" I mean because the brain is incomprehensibly complex to us, is a composite of all kinds of "skills" that are subtly different in each individual, this is what I mean't by a multidimensional spectrum. It seems to me that even while trying to identify very specific manifestations of a symptom it's going to be easy to mix up completely separate underlying causes.