Dyslexia

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Dyslexia
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What is Dyslexia?

• Before the National Institutes of Health began
  their research in the 1980's, the only definition
  of dyslexia was an exclusionary one. If a child's
  difficulty with reading could not be explained by
  low intelligence, poor eye sight, poor hearing,
  inadequate educational opportunities, or any
  other problem, then the child must be dyslexic.
• That definition was not satisfactory to parents,
  teachers, or researchers. So here are three
  different definitions in use today.

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definition used by the National Institutes of
Health

• Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that
  is neurological in origin.
• It is characterized by difficulties with accurate
  and/or fluent word recognition, and by poor
  spelling and decoding abilities.
• These difficulties typically result from a
  deficit in the phonological component of language
  that is often unexpected in relation to other
  cognitive abilities and the provision of
  effective classroom instruction.
• Secondary consequences may include problems in
  reading comprehension and reduced reading
  experience that can impede growth of vocabulary
  and background knowledge.

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causes of dyslexia

• Dyslexia is an inherited condition. Researchers
  have determined that a gene on the short arm of
  chromosome 6 is responsible for dyslexia. That
  gene is dominant, making dyslexia highly
  heritable. It definitely runs in families.
• Dyslexia results from a neurological difference
  that is, a brain difference. People with dyslexia
  have a larger right-hemisphere in their brains
  than those of normal readers. That may be one
  reason people with dyslexia often have
  significant strengths in areas controlled by the
  right-side of the brain, such as artistic,
  athletic, and mechanical gifts 3-D visualization
  ability musical talent creative problem solving
  skills and intuitive people skills.

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• In addition to unique brain architecture, people
  with dyslexia have unusual "wiring". Neurons are
  found in unusual places in the brain, and are not
  as neatly ordered as in non-dyslexic brains.
• In addition to unique brain architecture and
  unusual wiring, f/MRI studies have shown that
  people with dyslexia do not use the same part of
  their brain when reading as other people. Regular
  readers consistently use the same part of their
  brain when they read. People with dyslexia do not
  use that part of their brain, and there appears
  to be no consistent part used among dyslexic
  readers.
• It is therefore assumed that people with dyslexia
  are not using the most efficient part of their
  brain when they read. A different part of their
  brain has taken over that function.

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Learning disability

• The term 'learning disability' means a disorder
  in one or more of the basic processes involved in
  understanding spoken or written language. It may
  show up as a problem in listening, thinking,
  speaking, reading, writing, or spelling or in a
  person's ability to do math, despite at least
  average intelligence.
• The term does not include children who have
  learning problems which are primarily the result
  of visual, hearing, or physical handicaps, or
  mental retardation, or emotional disturbance, or
  of environmental, cultural, or economic
  disadvantage.

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Phonemic Awareness

• Quotes from prominent NIH researchers
• "The lack of phonemic awareness is the most
  powerful determinant of the likelihood of failure
  to learn to read."
• "Phonemic awareness is more highly related to
  learning to read . . . than tests of general
  intelligence, reading readiness, and listening
  comprehension."
• "Phonemic awareness is the most important core
  and causal factor separating normal and disabled
  readers."
• NIH research has repeatedly demonstrated that
  lack of phonemic awareness is the root cause of
  reading failure. Phonemes are the smallest unit
  of SPOKEN language, not written language.
• Children who lack phonemic awareness are unable
  to distinguish or manipulate SOUNDS within SPOKEN
  words or syllables. They would be unable to do
  the following tasks

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• Phoneme Segmentation what sounds do you hear in
  the word hot? What's the last sound in the word
  map?
• Phoneme Deletion what word would be left if the
  /k/ sound were taken away from cat?
• Phoneme Matching do pen and pipe start with the
  same sound?
• Phoneme Counting how many sounds do you hear in
  the word cake?
• Phoneme Substitution what word would you have if
  you changed the /h/ in hot to /p/?
• Blending what word would you have if you put
  these sounds together? /s/ /a/ /t/

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• Rhyming tell me as many words as you can that
  rhyme with the word eat.
• If a child lacks phonemic awareness, they will
  have difficulty learning the relationship between
  letters and the sounds they represent in words,
  as well as applying those letter/sound
  correspondences to help them "sound out" unknown
  words.
• So children who perform poorly on phonemic
  awareness tasks via oral language in kindergarten
  are very likely to experience difficulties
  acquiring the early word reading skills that
  provide the foundation for growth of reading
  ability throughout elementary school.
• Phonemic awareness skills can and must be
  directly and explicitly taught to children who
  lack this awareness.

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Phonological Processing and Phonics

• Phonemic awareness must exist or be explicitly
  and directly taught BEFORE phonics (or
  phonological) instruction begins. Otherwise, the
  phonics instruction will not make sense to the
  dyslexic child.
• Phonological processing starts by knowing which
  speech sounds are represented by which written
  letters.
• The goal of teaching phonics is to make
  phonological processing fluent and automatic.
  Phonics teaches how the written letters blend
  together to produce words, how the sounds of the
  letters change depending on the letters that
  surround them, the rules regarding adding
  suffixes and prefixes, and so on. In other words,
  phonics teaches students the internal linguistic
  structure of words.

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Myths About Dyslexia

• Dyslexia does not exist.
• Dyslexia is a "catch all" term.
• There is no way to truly diagnose dyslexia.
• Many children who experience reading and writing
  problems in kindergarten through third grade will
  outgrow those problems. These children are just
  developmentally delayed.
• Repeating a grade will often help children gain
  skills because it allows them to mature and
  become developmentally ready to read.
• Children outgrow dyslexia.

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• Dyslexia is a visual problem. Therefore, vision
  therapy, eye tracking exercises, and/or colored
  lenses will solve the problem.
• Children with dyslexia see things backwards.
• All children who reverse b's and d's or p's and
  q's have dyslexia.
• If a child does not "mirror write" or reverse
  letters and numbers, he/she does not have
  dyslexia.
• The way to help a child to read is to force him
  or her to read at least 20 minutes a day.
• Dyslexic children will never read well. It is
  best to teach them to compensate.
• If you don't teach a dyslexic child to read by
  age 12, it is too late. They won't be able to
  learn to read after age 12.

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Symptoms of Dyslexia

• No two people with dyslexia are exactly alike. No
  one will have every single symptom, and the
  symptoms they do have can range from mild to
  severe. Clinicians look for a "constellation" or
  cluster of symptoms in the following areas.

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Pre-school and kindergarten warning signs

• delayed speech (not speaking any words by the
  child's first birthday)
• mixing up sounds in multi-syllabic words (ex
  aminal for animal, mawn lower for lawn mower,
  bisghetti for spaghetti, flustrated for
  frustrated)
• inability to rhyme by age 4
• lots of allergies or stronger and more severe
  reactions to childhood illnesses than most other
  kids
• can't master tying shoes
• confusion over left versus right, over versus
  under, before versus after, and other
  directionality words and concepts
• lack of dominant handedness (switches from right
  hand to left hand between tasks or even while
  doing the same task)
• inability to correctly complete phonemic
  awareness tasks
• difficulty learning the names of the letters or
  sounds in the alphabet difficulty writing the
  alphabet in order

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Reading

• slow, labored, inaccurate reading of single words
  in isolation (when there is no story nor pictures
  to provide clues)
• when reading aloud, reads in a slow, choppy
  cadence (not in smooth phrases), and often
  ignores punctuation
• becomes visibly tired after reading for only a
  short time
• reading comprehension may be low due to spending
  so much energy trying to read the words.
  Listening comprehension is usually significantly
  higher than reading comprehension.
• When reading, frequently reverses, inverts, or
  transposes letters
• reverses means flipping a letter horizontally
  along a vertical axis, such as reading ded for
  bed, or bog for dog
• inverts means flipping a letter upside down, such
  as may for way, or we for me
• transposes means switching the order of two
  adjacent letters, such as on for no, gril for
  girl, own for won
• Substitutes similar-looking words, even if it
  changes the meaning of the sentence, such as
  sunrise for surprise, house for horse, while for
  white, wanting for walking
• When reading a story or a sentence, substitutes a
  word that means the same thing but doesn't look
  at all similar, such as travel for journey, fast
  for speed, cry for weep
• Misreads, omits, or even adds small function
  words, such as an, a, from, the, to, were, are,
  of
• Omits or changes suffixes, such as need for
  needed, talks for talking, late for lately.

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Spelling

• Spelling errors consist of reversals, inversions,
  or transpositions (just like the reading errors)
• Continually misspells sight words (nonphonetic
  but very common words) such as they, when,
  balldespite extensive practice
• Misspells even when copying something from the
  board or from a book
• Written work shows signs of spelling
  uncertainty--numerous erasures, cross outs, etc.

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HandwritingDysgraphia

• Also known as a visual-motor integration problem,
  people with dyslexia often have poor, nearly
  illegible handwriting. Signs of dysgraphia
  include
• Unusual pencil grip, often with the thumb on top
  of the fingers (a "fist grip")
• May hold onto the pencil lower than normal (just
  above the lead), or higher than normal (an inch
  or two above the start of the paint)
• If pencil grip is lower than normal, the child
  will often put his/her head down on the desk to
  watch the tip of the pencil as he/she writes
• The pencil is gripped so tightly that the child's
  hand cramps. The child will frequently put the
  pencil down and shake out his/her hand.
• Writing letters is a slow, labored, non-fluent
  chore
• Child writes letters with unusual starting and
  ending points
• Child has great difficulty getting letters to
  "sit" on the horizontal lines.
• Unusual spatial organization of the page. Words
  may be widely spaced or tightly pushed together.
  Margins are often ignored.
• Child has an unusually difficult time learning
  cursive writing, and shows chronic confusion
  about similarly-formed cursive letters such as f
  and b, m and n, w and u. They will also
  difficulty remembering how to form capital
  cursive letters.

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Quality of Written Work

• People with dyslexia usually have an
  "impoverished written product." That means that
  their intelligence and abilities are not apparent
  when looking at something they wrote. Their
  intelligence is obvious when you speak to them,
  but it is not obvious when they write. They tend
  to
• write extremely short sentences
• take an unusually long time to write, due to
  dysgraphia
• display very poor mastery of punctuation as well
  as grammar, syntax and suffixes
• misspell many words
• have nearly illegible handwriting, due to
  dysgraphia
• use space poorly on the page odd spacing between
  words, may ignore margins, sentences tightly
  packed into one section of the page instead of
  being evenly spread out
• miss many errors in written work even when
  proofreading has been attempted

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Directionality

• Most dyslexic children and adults have chronic
  difficulty with many aspects of directionality.
• Geographic directionality confusion about north,
  south, east and west difficulty reading or
  following maps chronically get lost when going
  to new places (and sometimes even to familiar
  places)
• Directionality words difficulty learning (or
  remembering) the meaning of words such as
  left-right, over-under, up-down, before-after,
  ahead-behind, forward-backward, east-west)
• Left-Right confusion this shows up in
  handwriting and in mathHandwriting trouble
  remembering where a letter starts and which way
  it goes. Does the circle on the b go this way or
  this way? Which way does the tail on a q go? Does
  an s start here and go to the right, or here and
  go to the left? Which way is left, anyway?Math
  trouble remembering which way to work a math
  problem.Reading goes from left to right, but
  adding, subtracting and multiplying goes the
  other way. However, long division goes the same
  way as reading (except when you're multiplying or
  subtracting within a division problem). When
  carrying a number, do I carry it to the left or
  to the right?

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Time concepts and time management

• People with dyslexia often have difficulty with
  time management and time concepts. They often
  have difficulty
• Telling time using an analog clock (a clock with
  hands) directionality issues add to this
  difficulty (which way do the hands go?), as does
  math. To understand "be home at quarter to six",
  you must know fractions (quarter means 1/4, 1/4
  of an hour is 15 minutes), and you must realize
  that "to six" means before six, and "before" has
  directionality issues (is that when the long hand
  is on the 9 or on the 3?)
• Knowing the months of the year in sequence. If
  you haven't mastered this, then you may
  mis-interpret a due date written as 5/15/98.
• Estimating the time a task requires. People with
  dyslexia are often chronically late to
  appointments and late turning in homework because
  they don't accurately estimate the time required
  to drive to a destination or to complete an
  assignment.
• Remembering the starting times and the sequence
  of classes in high school, both on regular school
  days and days with shortened schedules due to
  rallies or inservice days.
• Using appointment calendars. People with dyslexia
  will often show up for appointments on the wrong
  day or the wrong week.

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Spatial Organization

• People with dyslexia have an extremely difficult
  time organizing physical space. They tend to
  prefer to pile things rather than to organize
  them and put them away. It is almost as though if
  they can't see item (if it is behind a door or in
  a drawer), they won't know where it is.
• This disorganization invades all of their
  personal space their rooms, their lockers, their
  backpacks, their offices, and their cars.
• They often have extreme difficulty organizing
  their offices or their study space.
• Also, perhaps due to their disorganization, they
  tend to lose many, many personal items clothing,
  watches, pagers, books, lunches, and shoes.
• They also have trouble bringing all necessary
  items to a meeting or to their house to do
  homework.

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Co-existing Conditions

• Attention Deficit Disorder (with or without
  Hyperactivity)Attention Deficity Disorder is a
  completely separate condition than dyslexia.
  However, research has shown that at least 40 of
  people with dyslexia also have AD/HD.
• Light Sensitivity (Scotopic Sensitivity)A small
  percentage (3 to 8) of people with dyslexia
  also have light sensitivity (sometimes called
  scotopic sensitivity). These people have a hard
  time seeing small black print on white paper. The
  print seems to shimmer or move some see the
  rivers of white more strongly than the black
  words. These people tend to dislike florescent
  lighting, and often "shade" the page with their
  hand or head when they read.
• Colored plastic overlays and/or colored lenses
  can eliminate the harsh black print against white
  paper contrast, and may make letters stand still
  for the first time in someone's life. However,
  the plastic overlays or colored lenses will not
  "cure" dyslexia, nor will they teach a dyslexic
  person how to read.

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Significant Strengths of people with dyslexia

• artistic skill
• musical ability
• 3-D visual-spatial skills
• mechanical ability
• vivid imagination
• athletic ability
• math conceptualization skills
• creative, global thinking
• curiosity and tenacity
• intuition

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Good careers for people with dyslexia

• You'll find people with dyslexia in every field.
  However, many excel in the following fields
• architecture
• interior or exterior design
• psychology
• teaching
• marketing and sales
• culinary arts
• woodworking

• carpentry
• performing arts
• athletics
• music
• scientific research
• engineering
• computers
• electronics
• mechanics
• graphic arts
• photography