Sally Shaywitz (born 1942) is an American physician-scientist who is the Audrey G. Ratner Professor in Learning Development at Yale University. She is the co-founder and co-director of the Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity.^[1] Her research provides the framework for modern understanding of dyslexia.

Scholia has a profile for Sally Shaywitz (Q25884184).

Shaywitz was born and raised in The Bronx.^[2] She is the daughter of two Eastern European immigrants.^[2] Her father was a dressmaker and her mother a homemaker.^[2] She earned her undergraduate degree at City College of New York, and originally considered a career in law.^[3] She was accepted early to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.^[3] That year her mother was diagnosed with endometrial cancer, and died just before Shaywitz started her medical studies.^[2] When Shaywitz joined medical school, she was one of four women in a class of one hundred students.^[2] Shaywitz completed her residency in pediatrics and developmental pediatrics.^[2] Alongside completing her training, Shaywitz had three children, whom she raised in Westport, Connecticut.^[4]

Shaywitz started her medical career seeing patients out of her home in suburban Connecticut.^[2] She was eventually recruited by Yale University to look after patients with learning disorders, including dyslexia.^[2] In 1979 she was recruited by Yale University to see patients with learning disorders, including dyslexia.^[5] Her research involves longitudinal epidemiological and neurobiological studies. In 1983 she started tracking a random cohort of children continuously from kindergarten to their current age in their 40s.^[1] The longitudinal study data also showed that the achievement gap in reading between typical and dyslexic students occurs early – in first grade and persists. This finding impelled her to develop an evidence-based efficient screener to identify at risk beginning in kindergarten.^[1]

In 1983 she started tracking a cohort of people from kindergarten to adulthood, a study which became known as The Connecticut Longitudinal Study.^[6] She showed that boys and girls were equally as likely to be affected by dyslexia.^[7] These studies allowed Shaywitz to identify a neural signature of dyslexia, as well as demonstrating that dyslexia is not simply a reading disorder young people 'outgrow'.^[6] According to Shaywitz, dyslexia arises due to inefficient function in the neural systems responsible for skilled reading.^[7] Shaywitz developed the "Sea of Strengths" model, which explains that dyslexia is a deficit in language processing.^[2] Her research identified that there is no connection between dyslexia and intelligence so that you can be very smart and still read very slowly.^[7]

In 2003 Shaywitz published Overcoming Dyslexia, a book which helps people identify, understand and overcome challenges in reading.^[8] In 2020 she, together with her son, psychiatrist, Jonathan Shaywitz, published the much updated Overcoming Dyslexia 2nd edition.^[9]

• 1995 Albert Einstein College of Medicine Distinguished Alumnus Award^[10]
• 1998 Elected member of the National Academy of Medicine^[11]
• 1998 Society for Women's Health Research Achievement Award in Women's Health^[3]
• 1999 American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Sidney Berman Award^[12]
• 2003 Margot Marek Book Award^[13]
• 2004 City College of New York Townsend Harris Medal^[14]
• 2005 Williams College Honorary Doctor of Science degree^[15]
• 2012 Samuel Torrey Orton Award (jointly with Bennett Shaywitz)^[16]
• 2017 Liberty Science Center Genius Award^[17]
• 2020 Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science^[18]

As of 2018, the definition of dyslexia as unexpected is codified in U.S. federal law (U.S. Public Law 115-391): The term “dyslexia” means an unexpected difficulty in reading for an individual who has the intelligence to be a much better reader, most commonly caused by a difficulty in the phonological processing (the appreciation of the individual sounds of spoken language), which affects the ability of an individual to speak, read, and spell.^[19]

• Sally E. Shaywitz; Bennett A. Shaywitz; Jack M. Fletcher; Michael D. Escobar (22 August 1990). "Prevalence of Reading Disability in Boys and Girls". JAMA. 264 (8): 998. doi:10.1001/JAMA.1990.03450080084036. ISSN 0098-7484. Wikidata Q105531840.
• Sally E Shaywitz; Bennett A Shaywitz (1 June 2005). "Dyslexia (specific reading disability)". Biological Psychiatry. list of psychiatry journals. 57 (11): 1301–1309. doi:10.1016/J.BIOPSYCH.2005.01.043. ISSN 0006-3223. PMID 15950002. Wikidata Q30991872.

Shaywitz is married to Bennett Shaywitz, a pediatric neurologist who headed that section at Yale from 1976 to 2015 and with whom she co-founded the Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity.^[3][20] They met and were married in 1963.^[7]