Dyslexia: More Common Than Just Mixed Up Letters
By Dr. Jody A. Jedlicka
Each fall youngsters head off to kindergarten, eager to embark on their educational journey. For most, the mysteries of reading magically and naturally unfold before them…but not for Ryan. Reading didn’t come naturally or seem to come at all. He didn’t read his cereal box at breakfast or notice road signs. He seemed unaware of his surroundings and uninterested in the written word. His parents watched him live cautiously as an observer, not a participant, helpless as school officials called him a “puzzle”. They tried speech therapy thinking that if he could say his sounds more clearly, reading would improve. His speech improved; reading did not. He was diagnosed with an auditory processing disorder that affected how clearly and accurately he heard sounds. Compensations were arranged but weren’t the answer either. Ryan was in 5th grade when I first met him and his parents were searching for answers. For Ryan and scores of other children – including very bright ones – the world of reading is a mystery.
More Common than You’d Think
Problems learning to read are dyslexia, a Greek word conjuring mystery but simply meaning poor reading. It affects 1 in 5 children and is estimated to be 80% of all learning disabilities. The 2005 Nation’s Report Card shows that 69% of 4th and 8th graders read below the proficient level.1 Less than 1/3 receive special school services while the remainder fall through the cracks, not bad enough to qualify. In class, reading equals academic success. In society it’s synonymous for intelligence. Children who struggle to read despite intelligence in other areas may never reach their true potential.
What Science Taught Us
In 1920’s medical descriptions, dyslexia was known as “word blindness” and was blamed for letter and word reversal. Recent research, however, shows that dyslexics don’t see letters or words backwards but cannot hear or break words into individual sounds, blend them together, or manipulate them.2 Reading depends more on auditory skills than vision. Children with hearing impairments have a notoriously difficult time learning to read, but blind children learn to read relatively easily if given an alternate code (Braille) to represent the sounds of language.
Sally Shaywitz, MD, is a neuroscientist and co-director of the Yale Center for the Study of Learning and Attention. Her research team used MRIs to watch active parts of the brain while reading and discovered major neural pathways for reading. The first is most active in beginning readers, responsible for analyzing words into individual sounds and linking them to letter codes.3
The second is active in more skilled readers to let them instantly recognize familiar words without breaking them down. After correctly analyzing and reading a word several times, a neural model of it is created in the brain, stored, and automatically retrieved when seen (with information on spelling, pronunciation, and meaning). This part of the brain becomes active the instant you see a familiar word before you’re consciously aware of seeing it, under-activated in dyslexics.
In older dyslexics, a third part of the brain picks up the slack to compensate for weaknesses elsewhere. Because of this, they can improve their reading but never read as quickly and efficiently as using the proper systems. This is natural, ineffective compensation.
The Cause Dictates the Cure
Dyslexia is identifiable and treatable by retraining brain pathways most active in early readers. The brain is incredibly responsive to targeted intervention and can create new neural pathways in areas where they were weak or nonexistent. Dyslexics’ brains can be rewired to respond like non-dyslexic brains, but there’s no time to waste. Waiting so see if things will improve on their own will put children further behind, experience more failure, and damage self-esteem. When intervention is started early, children can potentially follow the same pattern of development as their peers. It’s never too late! Even the brains of older children can be rewired with extensive practice. The gap between their performance and that of their classmates can be closed.
The Components of a Good Reading Program
How can you close this gap? A good reading program…that must be intense and delivered 1-on-1 with daily practice identifying and manipulating sounds of spoken language. Also needed is instruction on how sounds are represented by letter codes (one or more letters that represent a sound), identifying words, spelling, vocabulary building, comprehension strategies, and practice, practice, practice.
Science gave us ammunition for children like Ryan to overcome a disorder once thought insurmountable. With intervention offered in ThinkRx and ReadRx, based on sound scientific knowledge, we train the brain to work the same as those without a reading problem. Ryan underwent intense cognitive skills training and reading intervention over the past several months. and woke up to the world around him. He’s watching the mystery of reading unfold and now reads every road sign and cereal box. He’s no longer an observer but stands taller, is happier, and is proud of his greatest and most recent discovery. Reading.
Without intervention, the child who struggles with reading early on will struggle into adulthood. Parents need to be aware of the warning signs of a risk for dyslexia.
Notes:
1 National Center for Education Statistics. NAEP – The Nation’s Report Card – Reading and Mathematics. http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/nrc/reading_math_2005/
2 McGuinness, Diane. Why Our Children Can’t Read. Simon and Schuster. New York. 1997.
3 Shaywitz, Sally. Overcoming Dyslexia. Random House, Inc. New York. 2003.
Dr. Jedlicka is an audiologist in Appleton, Wisconsin and the owner/director of LearningRx Training centers in Appleton and Green Bay.