A Short Introduction to Dyslexia

Dyslexia

What is Dyslexia?

The word dyslexia is a combination of two Greek words, "dys," meaning, hard or poor, and "lexis," that is, speech or words.

How Dyslexia affects a person.

Dyslexia creates a problem in literacy and language skills, working memory, processing matters with speed, the automatic development of skills and other areas of writing, reading and absorbing matter. The individual is usually proficient in other fields, but would require special specific intervention attention regarding the area of the brain that affects the reading and writing skills.
It appears to be an accepted assumption or concept that Dyslexia is a function of reading in reversed order.

Example

Was → saw… 9→6    (reversal problems of letters and words) on---no

The letters ‘p’ and ‘b’ are often mistaken, as is ‘q’ and ‘d’
This problem goes deeper than simply reading letters backwards. Recognizing letters and learning them and their order to make a word creates a problem with dyslectics.

Recognizing the Problem.

When we are aware that a person is smart enough to be able to learn to read, but we "can't" figure out why he doesn't read, we are on the way to understanding and recognizing that there is a problem.

Factors that determine a Dyslectic.

The mind of a dyslectic often works in favor of pictures as opposed to words.
A good example of this is Walt Disney who opened a world to children, taking advantage of his dyslexia and putting emphasis on his drawing application.
It has been proven that a gene (chromosome #6) is a contributing factor for dyslexia. This is a gene that is hereditary and therefore appears that dyslexia would run in the family. (heredity)

Symptoms of Dyslexia

At the nursery school age, children find it difficult to remember and learn the nursery rhymes since they have difficulties with auditory memory. There are those with visual memory and processing would create a more severe form of dyslexia. Difficulty with perception of sounds is known as phonological dyslexia.
The child may be a late speaker, or have a problem picking up speech and language.
There is also the Dyslectic whose brain is affected in the mathematic area.

Possible Problems that could be Created.

At the school level, Dyslexia can cause a child to feel inadequate and lack self confidence. This comes about due to the time it will take the dyslectic to understand a written article as opposed to a regular learner. Making a connection between the written word, the sound that the dyslectic hears, the image they conjure and the picture they see. These factors can become jumbled.
Reading is a not unlike the act of riding a bike: a lot of practice, concentration, and at the end of the day, the act becomes second nature and automatic. The focus can then be placed on comprehending what has been learnt. This could and should be the case with a typical child who has normal development.

Phonetic awareness is one of the first things that children learn and if this is not integrated by a child at an early age, they will have difficulty with relationships between letters and sounds and will not be capable of transferring the letter to the sound. This will hamper the child with many aspects of language development.

Though there is a difference in the analyses of dyslexia in the eyes of the physicians and the psychologists, there is a consensus of opinion that dyslexia is found in people who have not been exposed to sufficient instruction of reading and commanding the language. They are generally people of normal intelligence.

The ratio in men and women is 8-1 of dyslectic individuals.

Dyslexia can be divided into groups:

Literal Dyslexia:

this is also know as “letter Blindness” – reading letters in the upper and lower case, together with matching the sounds:
Example:
Make – kame,  side  - dice

Phonological Dyslexia:
Here, the dyslexic can read and recognize a word in a specific context, but will not recognize the same word in another context.

Neglect Dyslexia:
This does not refer to the neglect of the condition, but that the dyslectic will only see half of a written word. Neglects to see the word as a whole.
Example:
“alphabetically” could be seen as “betically” a problem which is often seen with long words.

Semantic Dyslexia:
This occurrence is when the dyslectic expects to see a word and reads it as the antonym or association of words as in animals, could see the word dog and read fox.  This is related to word expectation.

Function words as in of, an, and, are not even noticed and the result is that sentence has no meaning.

Spelling Dyslexia.
In Spelling Dyslexia, a dyslectic all types of words can be a problem and trouble will be found with identifying individual letters. Needless to say, their reading will be very slow. Some dyslexics tend to read words, one letter at a time, even if they are short and familiar.  Dyslectics tend to read letters and not a word as a whole.

Pure Dyslexia:
In this case of Dyslexia, the person does not have dysgraphia, (which is a writing impairment).
This creates a problem with writing letters and words, difficulty grasping meanings of words, difficulty with integrating the sounds of letters and to add to the problem, the person has problems pronouncing unfamiliar words.

The above would create the biggest challenge and problem for education and long term work.

In Dyslexia Without Dysgraphia, (a disability to write) a person has problem in reading but not in writing. Sometimes, it is referred to as, "Pure Dyslexia." Some have trouble doing written arithmetic because they have to read the text and the numbers, but the same people may not have any problem in dealing with figures orally. Dyslexia without Dysgraphia may never be identified, because, to confuse matters, a person may have a nearly normal oral language and, his or her writing and oral spelling may be virtually unimpaired.
Therefore, the conclusion that we can come to is that there are many types of dyslectics and they are not created equal. A careful analysis must be carried out to help a reader, as early in life as possible.

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