Dyslexia
Dyslexia, also known as reading disorder, is characterized by trouble with reading unrelated to problems with overall intelligence. Dyslexia is the most common learning disability, affecting 3–7 % of the population. Different people are affected to varying degrees.
There is no cure for Dyslexia, however it can help if teaching methods are adjusted to meet the person’s needs. While not curing the underlying problem, it may decrease the degree of symptoms. Treatments targeting vision are not effective.
The cause of dyslexia is believed to involve both genetic and environmental factors. It can begin in childhood or adulthood. Dyslexia is not caused by insufficient teaching; or either hearing or vision problems. This is what you need to know:
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Dyslexia
1. Classification
2. Definition
3. Signs and Symptoms of Dyslexia
4. Language
5. Associated conditions
6. Causes
7. Diagnosis
8. Management
9. Prognosis
About Dyslexia
Dyslexia is the most common learning disability, affecting 3–7 % of the population; however, up to 20% may have some degree of symptoms. While dyslexia is more often diagnosed in men, it has been suggested that it affects men and women equally. Dyslexia occurs in all areas of the world. Some believe that dyslexia should be best considered as a different way of learning, with both benefits and downsides.
Problems may include difficulties in: spelling words; writing words; “sounding out” words in the head; pronouncing words when reading aloud; understanding what one reads. and reading quickly.
Often these difficulties are first noticed at school. When someone who previously could read loses their ability, it is known as alexia. The difficulties are involuntary and people with this disorder have an unaffected desire to learn.
The cause of dyslexia is believed to involve both genetic and environmental factors. Some cases run in families. It often occurs in people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and is associated with similar difficulties with numbers. It may begin in adulthood as the result of a traumatic brain injury, stroke, or dementia. The underlying mechanisms are problems within the brain’s language processing.
Dyslexia is diagnosed through a series of tests of memory, spelling, vision, and reading skills. Dyslexia is not caused by insufficient teaching; or either hearing or vision problems.
Dyslexia is thought to have two types of cause, one related to language processing and another to visual processing. It is considered a cognitive disorder, not a problem with intelligence. However, emotional problems often arise because of it.
Some published definitions are purely descriptive, whereas others propose causes. The latter usually cover a variety of reading skills and deficits, and difficulties with distinct causes rather than a single condition.
The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke definition describes dyslexia as “difficulty with spelling, phonological processing (the manipulation of sounds), or rapid visual-verbal responding”.
The British Dyslexia Association definition describes dyslexia as “a learning difficulty that primarily affects the skills involved in accurate and fluent word reading and spelling” and is characterized by “difficulties in phonological awareness, verbal memory and verbal processing speed”.
Acquired dyslexia or alexia may be caused by brain damage due to stroke or atrophy. Forms of alexia include pure alexia, surface dyslexia, semantic dyslexia, phonological dyslexia, and deep dyslexia
There is some variability in the definition of dyslexia. Some sources, such as the U.S. National Institutes of Health, define it specifically as a learning disorder.
Other sources, however, define it simply as inability to read in the context of normal intelligence, and distinguish between developmental dyslexia (a learning disorder) and acquired dyslexia (loss of the ability to read caused by brain damage).
ICD 10, the manual of medical diagnosis used in much of the world, includes separate diagnoses for “developmental dyslexia” and for “dyslexia and alexia”. DSM 5, the manual of psychiatric diagnosis used in the United States, does not specifically define dyslexia, justifying this decision by stating that “the many definitions of dyslexia and dyscalculia meant those terms would not be useful as disorder names or in the diagnostic criteria”.
Instead it includes dyslexia in a category called specific learning disorders.
in early childhood, symptoms that correlate with a later diagnosis of dyslexia include delayed onset of speech, difficulty distinguishing left from right, difficulty with direction, as well as being easily distracted by background noise. The reversal of letters or words and mirror writing are behaviors sometimes seen in people with dyslexia, but are not considered to be defining characteristics of the disorder.
Dyslexia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) commonly occur together; about 15% of people with dyslexia also have ADHD and 35% of those with ADHD have dyslexia.
School-age dyslexic children may exhibit signs of difficulty in identifying or generating rhyming words, or counting the number of syllables in words, both of which depend on phonological awareness.
They may also show difficulty in segmenting words into individual sounds or may blend sounds when producing words, indicating reduced phonemic awareness.
Difficulties with word retrieval or naming things is also associated with dyslexia: 647 Dyslexics are commonly poor spellers, a feature sometimes called dysorthographia or dysgraphia, which depends on orthographic coding.
Problems persist into adolescence and adulthood and may accompany difficulties with summarizing stories, memorization, reading aloud, or learning foreign languages. Adult dyslexics can often read with good comprehension, though they tend to read more slowly than non-dyslexics and perform worse in spelling tests or when reading nonsense words – a measure of phonological awareness.
A common myth about dyslexia is that its defining feature is reading or writing letters or words backwards, but this is true of many children as they learn to read and write.
The orthographic complexity of a language directly impacts how difficult learning to read the language is.
English and French have comparatively “deep” phonemic orthographies within the Latin alphabet writing system, with complex structures employing spelling patterns on several levels: letter-sound correspondence, syllables, and morphemes.
Languages such as Spanish, Italian and Finnish have mostly alphabetic orthographies, which primarily employ letter-sound correspondence – so-called shallow orthographies – which for dyslexics makes them easier to learn.
Logographic writing systems, such as Chinese characters, have extensive symbol use, and pose problems for dyslexic learners.
Dyslexia is often accompanied by several learning disabilities, but it is unclear whether they share underlying neurological causes. These associated disabilities include:
Dysgraphia: A disorder which primarily expresses itself through difficulties with writing or typing, but in some cases through difficulties associated with eye–hand coordination and direction- or sequence-oriented processes such as tying knots or carrying out repetitive tasks. In dyslexia, dysgraphia is often multifactorial, due to impaired letter-writing automaticity, organizational and elaborative difficulties, and impaired visual word forming which makes it more difficult to retrieve the visual picture of words required for spelling.
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: A significant degree of comorbidity has been reported between ADHD and reading disorders such as dyslexia. ADHD occurs in 12–24% of all individuals with dyslexia.
Auditory processing disorder: A listening disability that affects the ability to process auditory information. This can lead to problems with auditory memory and auditory sequencing. Many people with dyslexia have auditory processing problems, and may develop their own logographic cues to compensate for this type of deficit. Some research indicates that auditory processing skills could be the primary shortfall in dyslexia.
Developmental coordination disorder: A neurological condition characterized by marked difficulty in carrying out routine tasks involving balance, fine-motor control, kinesthetic coordination, difficulty in the use of speech sounds, problems with short-term memory, and organization.
Neuroanatomy
Modern neuroimaging techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) have shown a correlation between both functional and structural differences in the brains of children with reading difficulties.
Some dyslexics show less electrical activation in parts of the left hemisphere of the brain involved with reading, such as the inferior frontal gyrus, inferior parietal lobule, and the middle and ventral temporal cortex. Over the past decade, brain activation studies using PET to study language have produced a breakthrough in the understanding of the neural basis of language.
Neural bases for the visual lexicon and for auditory verbal short-term memory components have been proposed, with some implication that the observed neural manifestation of developmental dyslexia is task-specific (i.e. functional rather than structural). fMRIs in dyslexics have provided important data which point to the interactive role of the cerebellum and cerebral cortex as well as other brain structures.
The cerebellar theory of dyslexia proposes that impairment of cerebellum-controlled muscle movement affects the formation of words by the tongue and facial muscles, resulting in the fluency problems that are characteristic of some dyslexics. The cerebellum is also involved in the automatization of some tasks, such as reading. The fact that some dyslexic children have motor task and balance impairments has been used as evidence for a cerebellar role in their reading difficulties. However, the cerebellar theory is not supported by controlled research studies.
There are tests that can indicate with high probability whether a person is a dyslexic. If diagnostic testing indicates that a person may be dyslexic, such tests are often followed up with a full diagnostic assessment to determine the extent and nature of the disorder.
Tests can be administered by a teacher or computer. Some test results indicate how to carry out teaching strategies..
Central Dyslexias include surface dyslexia, semantic dyslexia, phonological dyslexia, and deep dyslexia.
ICD-10 reclassified the previous distinction between dyslexia (315.02 in ICD-9) and alexia (315.01 in ICD-9) into a single classification as R48.0.
The terms are applied to developmental dyslexia and inherited dyslexia along with developmental aphasia and inherited alexia, which are considered synonymous.
Through the use of compensation strategies, therapy and educational support, dyslexic individuals can learn to read and write.
There are techniques and technical aids which help to manage or conceal symptoms of the disorder. Removing stress and anxiety alone can sometimes improve written comprehension. For dyslexia intervention with alphabet-writing systems, the fundamental aim is to increase a child’s awareness of correspondences between graphemes (letters) and phonemes (sounds), and to relate these to reading and spelling by teaching how sounds blend into words.
It has been found that reinforced collateral training focused on reading and spelling yields longer-lasting gains than oral phonological training alone. Early intervention – that done while the language areas of the brain are still developing – is the most successful in reducing the long-term impacts of dyslexia.
There is some evidence that the use of specially-tailored fonts may mitigate the effects of dyslexia. These fonts, which include Dyslexie, OpenDyslexic, and Lexia Readable, were created based on the idea that many of the letters of the Latin alphabet are visually similar and may therefore confuse dyslexics. Dyslexie and OpenDyslexic both put emphasis on making each letter more distinctive in order to be more easily identified. Font design can have an effect on reading, reading time, and the perception of legibility of all readers, not only those with dyslexia.
Dyslexic children require special instruction for word analysis and spelling from an early age. However, there are fonts that can help dyslexics better understand writing. The prognosis, generally speaking, is positive for individuals who are identified in childhood and receive support from friends and family.
The percentage of people with dyslexia is unknown, but it has been estimated to be as low as 5% and as high as 17% of the population.
There are different definitions of dyslexia used throughout the world, but despite significant differences in writing systems, dyslexia occurs in different populations. Dyslexia is not limited to difficulty in converting letters to sounds. The phonological-processing hypothesis attempts to explain why dyslexia occurs in a wide variety of languages. Furthermore, the relationship between phonological capacity and reading appears to be influenced by orthography.
Before the 1980s, dyslexia was thought to be a consequence of education, rather than a basic disability. As a result, society often misjudges those with the disorder. There is also sometimes a workplace stigma and negative attitude towards those with dyslexia. If a dyslexic’s instructors lack the necessary training to support a child with the condition, there is often a negative effect on the student’s learning participation.
Visit DOPA to find out more about Dyslexia:
www.dopasolution.com/what-is-dyslexia/
Understanding Dyslexia and How to Help Children Who Have It:
https://childmind.org/article/understanding-dyslexia/
The Importance of Self-Esteem for Kids With Learning and Attention Issues:
https://www.understood.org/en/friends-feelings/empowering-your-child/self-esteem/the-importance-of-self-esteem-for-kids-with-learning-and-attention-issues