About Dyslexia

Dispelling the Myth

When someone says "dyslexia," most people think of kids that get their b’s and d’s mixed up. Or, people who transpose two digits of a phone number. That is not always the case. In fact, dyslexia can be expressed in a variety of ways and can be more or less severe depending on the individual.

Recent research indicates that dyslexic individuals develop an inefficient phonological coding system that leads to difficulties in listening, speaking, reading, spelling, and/or written language. This phonological coding system normally develops as children hear language in their infancy. A phonological coding system is the way a child processes individual sounds in the language.

Early signs of dyslexia include late talking. These children may have more difficulty pronouncing words, mixing up syllables or sounds, like "basgetti" for spagetti. They are usually slower acquiring new vocabulary, or unable to remember words.

Young dyslexics have difficulty learning to rhyme. They may have difficulty separating sounds into words or identifying word boundaries within a sentence. They may have trouble learning the alphabet. Sometimes they show difficulty following multi-step directions.

School age dyslexics may accommodate reading difficulties by memorizing all of the words. They use-up valuable memory, then have difficulty learning to read at higher levels. Another way a dyslexic accommodates reading is to guess words based on the context; but when they begin to read about unfamiliar topics, they fail to understand the text. Tragically, without appropriate remediation, children carry these inefficient reading strategies into adulthood.

There is a variety of ways that students make their way around their difficulties; yet, all dyslexics have one major problem at the core of their learning problems. Dyslexia is a difficulty with language. Individuals with dyslexia have trouble interpreting individual sounds in speech. As a consequence they have trouble learning to associate the letter patterns in print with their sounds.

"Phonological" refers to the sound system within our language. There are about 42 sounds utilized in the English language. Non-dyslexic children automatically recognize that our language is produced from these basic sounds, and they naturally develop an internal coding system that helps them determine appropriate ways to combine these 42 sounds to make words. Dyslexic children may chunk language into a thousand different sounds, which requires more memory to manipulate. This makes it difficult to recognize subtle differences like "lend" and "lent," or "car" and "cart."

Neurobiological and genetic factors play a role in how an infant perceives language; so, dyslexia tends to run in families. Often, children develop this difficulty without any family history of dyslexia. Cause, is still relatively unknown. Yet, we know that it is developmental with many environmental factors determining the severity of the outcome.

Regardless of cause, early intervention is key to helping children avoid learning problems. When dyslexic children are taught to recognize individual sounds in language, before the end of first grade, they have significantly fewer problems learning to read at grade level than children who are not helped until third grade. Current educational practices make it hard to diagnose a child with dyslexia until the third grade. Regrettably, many dyslexic children have to experience school failure before they are properly identified. Even then some children never get the right kind of training to overcome the core problem.

Intervention should include systematic language instruction taught with multi-sensory techniques, and include aspects of language where the child shows difficulty. The teacher must continually recognize how the student approaches the task of reading and how to ultimately turn that thinking to be more efficient for learning at school. Teachers adept at this type of teaching usually meet with students individually. They make the rules within our language very explicit and obvious to the student and give them plenty of practice applying the new skill to reading words and stories.

Young children can be assessed for reading sub-skills: phonological awareness, listening, speaking, and sound to symbol associations. If difficulties are noticed at a young age, remediation can begin immediately producing more favorable outcomes.

Basic Facts about Dyslexia, 1993, 2^nd ed. 1998. The International Dyslexia Association, Baltimore, MD.

Hall, Susan & Moats, Louisa C., Ed. D. Parenting a struggling Reader, 2002, Broadway Books, N.Y.

www.ubida.org

Lakeside Reading Center, Inc. offers educational therapy for dyslexics, reading improvement support to schools, and educational consulting for individuals. To contact us please call 801-732-9442 (Roy) or 801-294-3121 (Bountiful).