Dyslexia Research Paper

Many people believe that dyslexia is where one simply reverses letters, but it is actual a learning disorder  that involves difficulty reading due to problems identifying speech sounds and learning how they relate to letters and words (decoding).

Dyslexia is a language-based learning disability characterized by difficulties with decoding (sounding out) words, fluent word recognition, and/or reading comprehension skills. Children with dyslexia often develop secondary problems with comprehension, spelling, writing, and knowledge acquisition. I feel like there needs to be more here for the intro, but i can’t think of what else to say……

So know that we know what dyslexia is, how do we know we have it, well one method is through looking at the signs or common traits.

Most dyslexics will exhibit about 10 of the following traits and behaviors. These characteristics can vary from day-to-day or minute-to-minute. The most consistent thing about dyslexics is their inconsistency. These 37 traits are broken up into seven categories based on what they affect. These categories are the traits that generally affect the person; the traits affecting a person’s vision, reading, and spelling; the traits affecting a person’s Hearing and Speech; the traits affecting a person’s Writing and Motor Skills; the traits affecting a person’s Mathematical ability and Time Management; the traits affecting a person’s Memory and Cognition; and finally traits affecting the person’s Behavior, Health, Development and Personality.

General

• Appears bright, highly intelligent, and articulate but unable to read, write, or spell at grade level.
• Labelled lazy, dumb, careless, immature, “not trying hard enough,” or “behavior problem.”
• Isn’t “behind enough” or “bad enough” to be helped in the school setting.
• High in IQ, yet may not test well academically; tests well orally, but not written.
• Feels dumb; has poor self-esteem; hides or covers up weaknesses with ingenious compensatory strategies; easily frustrated and emotional about school reading or testing.
• Talented in art, drama, music, sports, mechanics, story-telling, sales, business, designing, building, or engineering.
• Seems to “Zone out” or daydream often; gets lost easily or loses track of time.
• Difficulty sustaining attention; seems “hyper” or “daydreamer.”
• Learns best through hands-on experience, demonstrations, experimentation, observation, and visual aids.
• Vision, Reading, and Spelling
• Complains of dizziness, headaches or stomach aches while reading.
• Confused by letters, numbers, words, sequences, or verbal explanations.
• Reading or writing shows repetitions, additions, transpositions, omissions, substitutions, and reversals in letters, numbers and/or words.
• Complains of feeling or seeing non-existent movement while reading, writing, or copying.
• Seems to have difficulty with vision, yet eye exams don’t reveal a problem.
• Extremely keen sighted and observant, or lacks depth perception and peripheral vision.
• Reads and rereads with little comprehension.
• Spells phonetically and inconsistently.
• Hearing and Speech
• Has extended hearing; hears things not said or apparent to others; easily distracted by sounds.
• Difficulty putting thoughts into words; speaks in halting phrases; leaves sentences incomplete; stutters under stress; mispronounces long words, or transposes phrases, words, and syllables when speaking.
• Writing and Motor Skills
• Trouble with writing or copying; pencil grip is unusual; handwriting varies or is illegible.
• Clumsy, uncoordinated, poor at ball or team sports; difficulties with fine and/or gross motor skills and tasks; prone to motion-sickness.
• Can be ambidextrous, and often confuses left/right, over/under.
• Math and Time Management
• Has difficulty telling time, managing time, learning sequenced information or tasks, or being on time.
• Computing math shows dependence on finger counting and other tricks; knows answers, but can’t do it on paper.
• Can count, but has difficulty counting objects and dealing with money.
• Can do arithmetic, but fails word problems; cannot grasp algebra or higher math.
• Memory and Cognition
• Excellent long-term memory for experiences, locations, and faces.
• Poor memory for sequences, facts and information that has not been experienced.
• Thinks primarily with images and feeling, not sounds or words (little internal dialogue).
• Behavior, Health, Development and Personality
• Extremely disorderly or compulsively orderly.
• Can be class clown, trouble-maker, or too quiet.
• Had unusually early or late developmental stages (talking, crawling, walking, tying shoes).
• Prone to ear infections; sensitive to foods, additives, and chemical products.
• Can be an extra deep or light sleeper; bedwetting beyond appropriate age.
• Unusually high or low tolerance for pain.
• Strong sense of justice; emotionally sensitive; strives for perfection.
• Mistakes and symptoms increase dramatically with confusion, time pressure, emotional stress, or poor health.

Dyslexia affects the development of the left temporal lobe in the brain that controls language, which lies just behind the ear. This part of the brain affects your information retrieval, the way you read, your sensory processing, your memory, and even your emotional stability. If you’ve ever had a word dancing on the tip of your tongue or tried to remember the name of your eighth grade algebra teacher and had problems, you can blame your left temporal lobe, which holds the language zone called Wernicke’s area. This controls the processes involved in mentally identifying and then producing the word or words needed to express a thought or name an object. Your memory is similarly affected by dyslexia, essential components of memory are integrated and stored in the temporal lobes, especially explicit memories — those that you can recall consciously and describe, such as facts, people, and places. When this part of the brain is damaged, memory is often impaired. Your reading comprehension and retention relies heavily on the dominant temporal lobe. The left temporal lobe helps to process sounds and written words into meaningful information. It allows you to remember what you read and integrate the new information into your memory.The temporal lobes are involved in organizing sensory input, such as sight and sound. They allow us to enjoy music, interpret what we hear and help us to give it meaning. The left temporal lobe also helps us make connections between unrelated items. Feelings of conviction and insight we sometimes experience have also been attributed to the temporal lobes. Through the research at Amen Clinics, the left temporal lobe is found to also influence emotional stability. Temporal lobe activity enhances mood stability, while increased or decreased activity in this part of the brain leads to fluctuating, inconsistent or unpredictable moods and behaviors.

A team of researchers led by Sally Shaywitz at Yale University confirmed that dyslexic individuals who become good readers have a different pattern of brain use than either nondyslexic readers, or dyslexics who still read poorly. The researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to evaluate brain activity among 20-year-old dyslexic men and women selected from a group that had been followed since kindergarten. All the dyslexic subjects had a history of severe reading impairment in early childhood. However, while some of the students continued to struggle with reading throughout their school years (“persistently poor readers”), others improved by their high school years, becoming accurate readers with strong comprehension skills (“accuracy improved readers”). Dyslexic subjects from both groups as well as non-dyslexic control subjects were asked to perform reading tasks involving phonological processing (non-word rhyming test) and ascertaining meaning (semantic category test).

During the non-word rhyming test [“Do leat and jete rhyme?], both dyslexic groups showed less activation of the left posterior and temporal areas of the brain as compared to the control group. However, the dyslexics who were improved readers also had greater activation of right temporal areas and both right and left frontal areas.

For the semantic category test [“Are corn and rice in the same category?”] the persistently poor readers showed brain activity very similar to the nondyslexic control group, despite the fact that their reading performance was significantly impaired. Like the control group, the persistently poor readers activate left posterior and temporal systems. In contrast, the improved dyslexic readers bypassed this area entirely.

These brain imaging studies show that teaching methods that may work well for a large majority of schoolchildren may be counterproductive when used with dyslexic children. Teaching methods based on intensive or systematic drill in phonemic awareness or phonetic decoding strategies may actually be harmful to dyslexic children. Such teaching might simply emphasize reliance on mental strategies that are as likely to diminish reading ability for dyslexic children as they are to improve it, increasing both the frustration and impairment level of dyslexic students.

There are 8 main types of dyslexia. They are Auditory, Visual, Attentional, Phonological Dyslexia, Surface Dyslexia, Developmental, Directional, and Math Dyslexia.

Auditory dyslexia involves difficulty processing sounds of letters or groups of letters. Multiple sounds may be fused as a singular sound. For example the word ‘back’ will be heard as a single sound rather than something made up of the sounds /b/ – /aa/ -/ck/. Single Syllable words are especially prone to this problem. Visual dyslexia is defined as reading difficulty resulting from vision related problems. Though the term is a misnomer, visual problems can definitely lead to reading and learning problems. A 2010 study from Tel Aviv University in Israel found a type of dyslexia they call Attentional Dyslexia in which children identify letters correctly, but the letters jump between words on the page. ‘kind wing’ would be read as ‘wind king.’ The substitutions are not caused by an inability to identify letters or convert them to sounds, but instead result from the migration of letters between words—the first letter of one word switches place with the first letter of another word. Phonological dyslexia is extreme difficulty reading that is a result of phonological impairment, meaning the ability to manipulate the basic sounds of language. The individual sounds of language become ‘sticky’, unable to be broken apart and manipulated easily. According to Nancy Mather and Barbara Wendling in their excellent 2012 book Essentials of Dyslexia Assessment and Intervention, surface dyslexia is:

“A type of dyslexia characterized by difficulty with whole word recognition and spelling, especially when the words have irregular spelling-sound correspondences.” Directional dyslexia is distinguished by left-right confusion and a tendency to become disoriented or lost. The term is also occasionally used to mean confusion with letters such as p and b or d and b, where there is confusion over the ‘direction’ of the letter. Generally, problems with directions are a symptom of dyslexia more than a sub-type. Not all dyslexics have this problem. Math dyslexia or dyscalculia is not, in fact, a type of dyslexia, but we included it here because the term is frequently used. According to the U.S. National Center for Learning Disabilities, math dyslexia, or dyscalculia, refers to a wide range of lifelong learning disabilities involving math, varies from person to person and affects people differently at different stages of life. As with reading, when basic math skills are not mastered early, more advanced math becomes extremely difficult. Approximately half of people with dyslexia also have dyscalculia, though far less research has been conducted regarding testing, assessment and remediation. Developmental dyslexia is not so much a type of dyslexia, it is dyslexia. In fact our definition of it would be the same as our definition of dyslexia generally: Extreme difficulty reading caused by a hereditary, brain based, phonological disability. So why do people use the term instead of just saying dyslexia? The simple answer is they are trying to be more specific, distinguishing ‘regular’ dyslexia from the other types of dyslexia. In particular, distinguishing it from acquired forms of dyslexia that result from stroke or head trauma for example, which often present very differently.

There are also 2 types of non heredical dyslexia , acquired and deep dyslexia.Acquired dyslexia results from trauma or injury to that part of the brain that controls reading and writing. Late in life this can be the result of a tumor or stroke. Deep dyslexia is an acquired form of dyslexia, meaning it does not typically result from genetic, hereditary (developmental) causes. It represents a loss of existing capacity to read, often because of head trauma or stroke that affects the left side of the brain. It is distinguished by two things:semantic errors and difficulty reading non-words.

So now that we know the different types of dyslexia, how do we diagnose them. Well there’s no single test that can diagnose dyslexia. A number of factors are considered, such as, Your child’s development, educational issues and medical history, Home life,  Questionnaires, Psychological testing,Vision, hearing and brain (neurological) tests, and Testing reading and other academic skills. When trying to check, a doctor will likely ask you questions about your child’s development, educational issues and medical history and want to know about any conditions that run in the family, including whether any family members have a learning disability, this will give them a baseline for testing. Next The doctor may ask for a description of your family and home life, including who lives at home and whether there are any problems at home. Afterward The doctor may have your child, family members or teachers answer written questions, and your child may be asked to take tests to identify reading and language abilities.These can help determine whether another disorder may be causing or adding to your child’s poor reading ability. The doctor may also ask you and your child questions to better understand your child’s mental health. This can help determine whether social problems, anxiety or depression may be limiting your child’s abilities. And finally, your child may take a set of educational tests and have the process and quality of reading skills analyzed by a reading expert. These partnered with the 37 common traits of dyslexia, listed above, help guide doctors to diagnosing your child as dyslexic.

“Since dyslexia is often a self-compensating disorder that can often be overcome with time, effort understanding — and especially treatment, it is crucial to provide dyslexics with success stories of well known individuals so that they don’t give up — and indeed persevere. Thus, for example, there have been many dyslexics that have made tremendous contributions to mankind. They include famous entertainers, designers, architects, writers, athletes, jurists, physicians, scientists, political and business leaders.These successful dyslexics learned to overcome or sidestep their hidden and frustrating barriers, permitting them to accomplish their dreams and desires. In fact, their disorder was often found to be a catalyst for success — forcing them to develop and utilize hidden talents. Often, their most crucial “life-saving” characteristics were determination and perseverance along with a desperate need to prove that they were not as dumb as they inwardly felt. As a result, they never gave up no matter how difficult the task before them seemed. Their successful lives, despite dyslexia, show us that “compensatory miracles” can be accomplished so long as dyslexics are encouraged by loving parents, caring teachers, and “healers” to believe in themselves.” A few of these famous dyslexics include, Leonardo da Vinci, Pablo Picasso, George Washington, Woodrow Wilson, Andrew Jackson,George Patton, Thomas Edison, Nelson Rockefeller,Jim Carrey,Albert Einstein,Steven Spielberg,Walt Disney,Keanu Reeves,Orlando Bloom,Magic Johnson, Cher, John Lennon, and many, many more. conclusion( once i got feedback i was going to do conclusion).

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