Dyslexia Defined
Understanding this Common Learning Disability
By: Leoni Benghiat
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| In November 1896, a doctor in Sussex, England, published the first description of the learning disorder we now know as dyslexia. Early explanations of dyslexia held that eye defects were to blame for the typical dyslexic way of reading—the reversing of letters or words. Because dyslexia is often accompanied by letter and word blurring, doctors then prescribed eye-training exercises to overcome these alleged visual defects. Since the early 1970s, however, research conducted by numerous groups including the International Dyslexia Association (IDA), Child Development Institute, the National Institutes of Health, and the Dyslexia Research Institute has found that dyslexia is not an eyesight problem, but rather a neurological one. | ||
| The term dyslexia covers a wide range of reading disabilities, from mild to severe. What most dyslexics have in common is difficulty grasping the shapes of letters and then relating those shapes to the sounds that the letters symbolize. Many also reverse the order of the letters in a word or even leave them out. | ||
| Statistics released by the National Institutes of Health in 1996 show 25 million Americans—one in every ten—are functionally illiterate, and at least 15 percent of school-age children—one in every seven—suffer from reading failure. As many as 80 percent of all people with learning disabilities have dyslexia. | ||
| According to Tom Viall, Executive Director of the IDA, of all children who display reading problems in the first grade, 74 percent will be poor readers in the ninth grade—a problem extending into adulthood unless children receive informed and explicit instruction on phonemic awareness. "Dyslexic children do not naturally grow out of reading difficulties," he stresses. | ||
What is Dyslexia? "Dyslexia is not a behavioral, psychological, motivational, or social problem," says Dr. Jane Peterson, an educational psychologist from New York. "And it is definitely also not a problem of having poor sight or low intelligence." | ||
| Rather, dyslexia is a neurological problem in the lower centers of the brain. "The signals that are supposed to get from the inner ear or the eyes to the brain where they can be interpreted are somehow scrambled. And because the signals get distorted, the higher and more intelligent centers of the brain have difficulty in processing the data," Dr. Peterson explains. | ||
| Dyslexia is also an inherited condition. If one parent has dyslexia and the other does not, parents should expect half of their children to have dyslexia. "And if both parents are dyslexic," says Dr. Susan Shaywitz, Co-Director of the Yale Center for Learning and Attention, and author of Overcoming Dyslexia: A New and Complete Science-Based Program for Reading Problems at Any Level, "all of their children are likely to inherit the disorder." | ||
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Dealing with Dyslexia Although dyslexia is a lifelong disorder, individuals with the condition frequently respond successfully to timely and appropriate intervention. | ||
| "My second grader reads okay, but she's terrible at spelling," says Dorothy Carlinsky, a Texas mother of three. "According to what I've read so far, she has many of the warning signs of dyslexia, but the school says she can't be dyslexic because she can read." | ||
| Not completely true, says Brian Cato, a remedial teacher from Newark, Ohio. "Most children with dyslexia can read, but they rarely make it to the fourth-grade reading level because they're reading in a very different way from the rest of us," he explains. "They are not reading by sounding out the words. Instead, they are reading by memorizing the shapes of words and guessing based on pictures and context. So, of course they're getting poor reading comprehension scores. They read too slowly and inaccurately." | ||
| The IDA proposes several compensatory strategies that provide ways for the child to get around the effects of dyslexia. These include audio taping lectures or texts, using flashcards to learn new things, positioning the child in the front of the classroom to better observe his teacher, and using a computer with spelling and grammar checks. "Many dyslexic students need one-on-one help so that they can move forward at their own pace," says Dr. Lissa Weinstein, Associate Professor in the Psychology Department of the City College of New York and herself a parent of a dyslexic child. "It is therefore helpful if these students' outside academic therapists work closely with their classroom teachers." | ||
The Gifted Side of Dyslexia "Even if your child is doing poorly in school, never think it means he or she is stupid," says Dr. Shaywitz. | ||
| Reading ability has been often associated with intelligence, and one might expect a dyslexic to have difficulty in higher-level thinking—such as the semantics, syntax, and discourse part of the language system. "In reality, for the dyslexic, it is reversed," Dr. Shaywitz explains. "The difficulty is in the phonological area. If you can't identify the word, you can't get to the meaning, so often the dyslexic will use content to guess the word. | ||
| Because a student with dyslexia, even with appropriate intervention, often finds school a struggle, the development of his healthy self-image is at risk. "Parents are well advised to focus on activities which the child may find easier and at which he may even excel, such as sports, hobbies, music, art or drama," suggests Dr. Susan Stine, Medical Coordinator of the Neurofibromatosis Program at Kalfred I. Du Pont Hospital for Children in Wilmington, Delaware. "Dyslexia often provides that extra drive, that spark of creativity that comes from developing different ways of thinking and working around a system." | ||
| "Dyslexics [are] amongst the highest level [of] conceptualizers," says Dr. Shaywitz. "They are often highly accomplished and become leaders in science, medicine, and law—among other professions. So, far from being stupid, they're actually highly gifted people." | ||
| Albert Einstein, Carl Lewis, Jewel, Magic Johnson, Napoleon Bonaparte, Steven Spielberg, Thomas Edison, Henry Winkler, Tom Cruise, and Winston Churchill provide proof that even with a learning disorder such as dyslexia, your child can go on to be a thinker, philosopher, athlete, actor, singer—the possibilities are endless. So parents of dyslexic children take heart—with love and support, your child can also overcome dyslexia and become a super achiever in her lifetime. | ||
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