WHAT IS DYSLEXIA??

It is estimated that 15% of Americans have Dyslexia. So, just what is this condition that seems to involve so much of our population??

Although practitioners and educators have been aware of the existence of Dyslexia since the 1900's, a single, universal definition has yet to be agreed upon for this obviously complicated and not well understood condition. Originally, it was called "word blindness" (by an ophthalmologist)and then later as a language disorder in attempts to account for the individual's poor reading skills. While some people consider it to be a learning disability (unable to recognize printed letters and words), others refer to it as a "gift" based on their special skills (generally have a high IQ and creative abilities). In a sense, they both are correct.

It appears that the most agreed upon definition for Dyslexia is that by the World Federation of Neurology, which defines Dyslexia as "A disorder manifested by difficulty in learning to read despite conventional instruction, adequate intelligence and sociocultural opportunity. It is dependent upon fundamental cognitive disabilities which are frequently of constitutional origin."

Dyslexic individuals tend to have difficulty processing phonological information which therefore causes them to struggle with reading and ultimately learning. These phonological-based problems are evident in that they have problems converting letters into sounds and words as well as using sounds to create words. They also tend to reverse letters, numbers and words and may even omit words when they are reading and writing. The end result with these problem areas is that they have a difficulty reading, learning, retaining and communicating information.

There have be three basic types of Dyslexia found which can explain for most of the variations between Dyslexic individuals.

1. Dysnemkinesia:
* motor problems with letter reversals when writing
* combination of the other two
* poor grapheme-phoneme integration (developing gestalts for written symbols)

2. Dysphonesia:
* poor ability to apply phonics and syllabication in coding of words
* auditory/linguistic difficulty
* poor decoding
* poor phonic spelling ability

3. Dyseidesia:
* poor ability to code whole words with their sounds
* visual-spatial difficulty
* poor sight vocabulary
* good phonetic spelling ability
* AD trait

Although there is a range in types of Dyslexia, they all possess eight basic mental abilities (Davis 1997).

1. They can utilize the brain's ability to alter and create perceptions (the primary ability)
2. They are highly aware of the environment
3. They are more curious than the average person
4. They think mainly in terms of pictures instead of words
5. They are highly intuitive and insightful
6. They think and perceive multi-dimensionally (using ALL the senses)
7. They can experience thought as reality
8. They have vivid imaginations

So, just WHAT does the Dyslexic individual experience? Here are some developmental steps involved in Dyslexia (Davis 1997).

1. The individual encounters an unrecognized stimulus (word/symbol/object).

2. The lack of recognition causes a confusion which stimulated disorientation. It is this disorientation that allows the individual to mentally examine the stimulus from different points of view. This process normall works for real objects but NO with language (which is symbols representing IDEAS and CONCEPTS).

3. The disorientation causes the assimilation of incorrect data. The individual has trouble determining mental perceptions from real perceptions.

4. The assimilation of incorrect data causes the individual to make mistakes. They are unable to distinguish between correct and incorrect information because BOTH are registered by the brain as actual perceptions. It is here where the FIRST symptoms of Dyslexia appear.

5. The mistakes cause emotional reactions. Even though it is human nature to make mistakes, nobody likes to do so.

6. Emotional reactions bring about frustration. This frustration that results is due not only to their mistakes they've made and their own emotional reactions to those mistakes but by other people's negative reaction to them as well.

7. Solutions are created or adopted to solve the problems stemming from the use of disorientation in the recognition process. These individuals find and employ different methods to obtain the desired solutions. Once a method has worked for the individual, they will used "stick with it" even though they may be unaware of doing so. Can often be referred to as a compulsive behavior, which usually tend to accumulate around age nine.

8. The learning disability is composed of the compulsive solutions the individual acquires. Compulsive solutions are mental crutched, rote memorizations, tricks or little gimmicks that the individual uses to give the APPEARANCE of understanding and learning.

9. These compulsive solutions are what disable the learning process. By using these compulsive solutions, an individual may actually learn how to read but they will have no understanding of the reading material. A different, "roundabout" mental process is usually used to try to gain some understanding of what is being read, but it is a very strenuous process.

Some examples of the types of compulsive solutions that these individuals may use include (Davis, 1997):

* Sing the "Alphabet Song" (out loud or mentally) to retrieve the letters of the alphabet
* Extreme concentration while reading
* Memorization
* Unusual body postures and motions
* Depend on others
* Sound out EVERY letter of EVERY word
* Avoidance