Chapter 2 explores the potential positive and negative characteristics of dyslexia in adulthood. It will discuss a framework for understanding dyslexia in terms of the impact of biology and cognition, as well as the environment. This is linked to the key elements discussed in chapter 1, providing a basis for understanding the impact that dyslexia can have on learning and performance both in education and the workplace, and how these can interact: poor qualifications restricting access to employment. The aim is to provide an explanation for challenges that many with dyslexia faces and how these may impact on employment, as well as on confidence and self-esteem. It will also highlight the potential strengths that a dyslexic individual can bring to work performance and daily life. As part of this discussion, a profile of skills/abilities is also presented. This includes many of the tests that comprise a typical dyslexia diagnosis, which can form the basis for understanding such assessments. The aim is that, by the end of this chapter, the reader will have a good foundation in understanding adult dyslexia, its potential consequences and some possible solutions to those challenges.

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative movement disorder that impairs emotional expression in older adults. Parkinson's disease decreases a person’s ability to express their emotions in the face, body, and voice. Due to this decrease in emotional expression, people with PD are often perceived with a bias by both medical professionals and lay observers. These misperceptions can lead to people with PD experiencing stigmatization, decreased quality of life, and decreased satisfaction in their social relationships. Following a review of how PD affects the perceptions of people with PD at both the encoder and decoder level, this chapter will present possible compensatory strategies for increasing accuracy in perceptions with health-related expressivity deficits such as increased engagement in valued activities and using deliberate expressions to show emotions in high stakes social situations.

Successful aging is a multidimensional construct that has been used by a variety of clinical and empirical disciplines to describe physical and psychological well-being among the elderly. While biomedical models of successful aging rely on fixed criteria related to health and disability status, psychological models emphasize dynamic processes that promote life satisfaction in the face of age-related declines. Psychological models have proposed individual traits that are associated with successful aging processes, including those related to coping with, adapting to, and compensating for age-related challenges (e.g., tenacious goal pursuit, flexibility, etc.). Grit is a noncognitive trait that may promote coping and compensation but has been relatively unexamined in relation to successful aging. The ability to adapt to age-related losses, such as physical disability and cognitive decline, may represent a previously unexplored facet of grit that is specific to older adults. Preserved cognitive functioning is an important component of successful aging that may be promoted by grit and the use of compensatory strategies. In the context of atypical cognitive decline, however, grit may fail to promote effective compensation and may instead result in the use of unsuccessful strategies or “costly perseverance.”