What is dyslexia?
People with dyslexia have difficulty with reading and spelling, unrelated to overall intellectual ability. Dyslexia refers specifically to difficulties with decoding words (or “sounding out” words), spelling words, and accurately and quickly recognizing words. It cannot be due to hearing or vision problems, or lack of appropriate instruction.
Is dyslexia the same thing as a learning disability?
Dyslexia is actually an alternative term for what the DSM-5 calls a Specific Learning Disorder with impairment in reading/writing (specifically: word recognition, decoding, and spelling). The terms are basically synonymous, though some advocacy groups push for use of the term “dyslexia,” with the goals of bringing awareness, connecting families to appropriate resources, and advocating for better services.
Are there different types and severities?
Officially, there aren’t different subtypes of dyslexia, but people can have trouble with different sub-skills of reading and writing. Different subtypes have been hypothesized by researchers, but have not been empirically established.
Dyslexia can be mild or severe, and people with milder dyslexia may compensate very well. For example, someone may seem to read well enough, but their reading comprehension may be compromised because they spend so much energy figuring out the words, and spelling may be very difficult.
Do people with dyslexia see letters or words backwards?
Dyslexia is not actually about seeing letters or words backwards. This is a very common myth but is simply not true! Letter reversals are a normal part of the early learning process. Children with dyslexia may continue to reverse letters longer than their peers (for example pesky b and d), but this is due to difficulty learning the sound-symbol correspondences, not because they see the letters differently. Essentially, people with dyslexia have trouble seeing letters as symbols, and view them more as objects, which are the same regardless of orientation (for example, a dog is a dog, whether you’re looking at it from the left or right).
As for whole-word reversals, that may happen sometimes, but it is related to difficulty sequencing the sounds in words, which is described below.
Is dyslexia related to intelligence?
One other thing that dyslexia is NOT: it is not related to intellectual ability. People with dyslexia can be very intelligent and can achieve extraordinary things, especially if they receive the proper help and accommodations. Also, people with dyslexia may have other difficulties, for example trouble with attention and focus, and oral language difficulties.
Is dyslexia common?
Yes, it is quite common, affecting about 5-12% of the population.
What are the risk factors?
Children with a family history of dyslexia are at increased risk. The child of a parent with dyslexia is about 40-60% likely to also have a reading disability. Other risk factors include speech and/or language difficulties that persist into school age. By school age, children who have noticeable difficulty learning the letter names are at high risk for dyslexia.
What causes dyslexia?
The root of dyslexia is neurobiological. You might be surprised, but it is primarily due to differences in the way a person’s brain processes the sounds of speech, and how those sounds relate to the symbols used for writing. Phonological processing includes:
- Phonological awareness: the ability to consciously analyze the sounds of spoken words. For example, to know that “snack” is made up of the sounds “s + n + a + k”. Difficulty with this leads children to omit, add, or mix up the order of letters in their spelling.
- Phonological working memory: keeping speech sounds in short-term memory. When child sound out words, they need to hold onto the sounds long enough to figure out the word.
- Phonological retrieval: the ability to quickly retrieve the sounds associated with letters. This is sometimes called “rapid naming” because it is usually assessed by measuring the ability to rapidly name letters, numbers, or even objects.
How is dyslexia identified?
When parents and teachers are concerned, they often seek a professional opinion in the form of an assessment for their child. Who can assess? In Quebec, licensed professionals in psychology/neuropsychology or speech-language pathology can evaluate for dyslexia. The evaluator will use a variety of standardized assessments with the child, speak with parents and teachers, view samples of school work, and determine the history of interventions to make a conclusion about the child’s difficulties and give specific recommendations about how to help. Looking at the history of interventions is very important in identifying dyslexia, because the child must have first received interventions that target the areas of difficulty.
What about screening for dyslexia?
In some ways, screening is more important than identification. A screening can be done for young children, as young as 4-5 years old, to determine their likelihood of needing special supports to learn to read and write. It is not possible to conclude whether or not a child this age is dyslexic, but a screening is essentially an assessment of risk, so that interventions can be provided as soon as possible, when they are most effective. Identification could come later, after the child has received some help.
What can be done to help someone with dyslexia?
The most important question! There is no “cure” for dyslexia, meaning it will always be a part of a person’s life to some extent. However, people with dyslexia can make incredible gains and learn to read and write well. The main strategies:
- Target the specific difficulties. A good assessment will tell us exactly what skills need to be worked on. This could mean working on sound-letter correspondences, phonological awareness, phonics, and/or learning about analyzing the parts of words, as in “con-struct-ion.” It should also involve lots of writing, and practicing new skills while reading sentences and stories at the appropriate level, using decodable texts in the early stages. Interventions should be fun and engaging, and allow for many repetitions to help children build their skills.
- Use appropriate accommodations. This means doing things differently to give access to written materials that are currently too hard for the child to read independently. This could be special text-to-speech technology, or it could be the help of an adult or peer to read the material aloud. There are also accommodations for writing, including word prediction and/or speech-to-text technology, or the help of an adult or peer to scribe the child’s ideas.
- Nurture the individual’s strengths. Because children with dyslexia often experience frustration and may even be stigmatized for their difficulties, it is probably especially important to encourage them to develop their talents in other areas, whether that’s drawing, gymnastics, Lego creations, martial arts, you name it!
Why are you so interested in dyslexia?
I just really want to help. I know there is a lot of opportunity to help, because reading difficulties are generally not well understood, even within the education community. I’ve met a lot of awesome kids who were pretty discouraged with reading and writing (and sometimes with life in general), having tried tutoring without great results. This drives me to learn more about latest research in dyslexia, and to continue bringing knowledge and experience to those who need it.
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