St Edward's Academic Review 2025

ST EDWARD’S, OXFORD

creativity of dyslexics compared with non-dyslexics, and that this difference is more pronounced in females than in males. Interestingly, the observation related to age, raises the question as to whether the enhanced creativity is an advantage which is learned through life, rather than being innate – through dyslexic individuals exposing themselves to more creative jobs and pastimes, effectively increasing their creative abilities through practice and honing their talents. Importantly, this association should be treated with significant caveats – the level of statistical robustness of this observation is relatively low, as under more robust statistical testing (regression analysis), the positive associations did not stand up – potentially because there are still too few subjects in the subset. The second meta-analysis considered was published by Majeed, Hartanto and Tan in 2021. Again, this article compiled data from a number of sources (nine, with data from over 850 participants). This analysis tested various domains of creativity and observed no significant benefit across the whole dyslexic population. However, they did find that dyslexic adults (as opposed to adolescents or children) demonstrated an enhanced creativity benefit in terms of fluency (the number of ideas), and flexibility (the number of categories of ideas) associated with their dyslexic status – a similar finding to Erbeli. Overall, therefore, the two meta-analyses only found limited support for the idea that individuals with dyslexia are more creative, with this benefit being seen more convincingly in adult subjects (compared to children), and females (compared to males). These findings need to be appropriately framed however. Meta-analyses have power in demonstrating a robust positive correlation (i.e. proving an association is real), but they have a poor negative predictive power (i.e. they are poor at disproving theories) (Haidich, 2010). Finally, when considered that the most recent and robust prospective trials in the field have shown a benefit and were published after the meta-analysis and therefore were not included, there does appear to be grounds for a link between dyslexia and creativity.

in dyslexics. The study asked the basic question, ‘Do dyslexic individuals view art differently and does that link to or drive a creative advantage?’ The research used Magritte’s contradictory paintings, which juxtapose pictorial and verbal imagery. These paintings require processing and thought to fully understand their messages. Ward and Kapoula hypothesised that the paintings might expose differences between dyslexic and non-dyslexic viewing and comprehending of art. They used sophisticated eye tracking technology to understand the differences in how the art was being viewed. The study demonstrated that dyslexics show higher creativity in two domains of creativity – fluidity and flexibility. In fact, for all three paintings tested, dyslexic individuals showed a higher degree of eye movement to the left and right, a similar abnormal pattern of movement which is seen when dyslexics read a passage of text, and similar to the observed visual challenges which El Hmimmdi observed in his trial. To summarize, most of these recent studies do suggest clear links between dyslexia and an increase in creativity. Furthermore, they demonstrate that creativity may be linked to an increase in the ability of the dyslexic brain to find associations between images and ideas, aiding the creative process. The data indicates that dyslexics may perceive the visual world in an enhanced manner, which may provide more ‘fuel’ for their enhanced creative talent. However, one important factor to take into account is that the number of participants enrolled in each of the trials reviewed in this section was relatively small, meaning that the statistical significance of the results could be called into question. In an attempt to overcome the limitations associated with relatively small sample sizes in most dyslexia trials, several investigators have produced meta analyses of the available data. Whilst meta-analyses lack precision in their findings, where they do see a benefit or disadvantage associated with dyslexia, the indication is that the relationship is likely to be a real finding and have statistical significance (Haidich, 2010). The first meta-analysis considered was performed by Erbeli, Peng and Rice in 2021. This analysis combines results from 20 trials, with over 770 dyslexic participants and 1,600 non-dyslexic controls. The analysis fails to demonstrate an overarching creative benefit in dyslexia. It does, however, show that in adulthood there is a potential increase in the Meta-analyses

Opinion-based research evidence

Another group of articles that can be considered, are those which are more opinion-based, and draw conclusions from previous research. The first of these is Schneps (2014), who proposes that,

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