This journal paper presented by Vellution and his associates outlines the most important findings of research that evaluates possible causes of reading abilities in dyslexia over the past four decades. The main purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive review of research on the fundamental cause(s) of developmental dyslexia. The secondary purpose is to present the evidence that reveals differences between early reading difficulties caused mainly by cognitive/biological deficits and those caused primarily by instructional deficits. The authors first propose a model that captures all the relevant knowledge and cognitive skills required for individuals in learning to read (figure 1). This model certainly indicates that reading is mainly a linguistic ability rather than once popular notion that it is primarily a visual skill. The model that underscores all reading components are thus used to analyze manifest causes of reading difficulties. The evidence suggests that basic deficits in alphabetic coding would lead to inadequate word identification and which then contributes to reading difficulties. Moreover, both phonological awareness and orthographic awareness have an impact on skills of alphabetic coding. Importantly, casual relationships between word identification difficulties and deficient phonological skills seem more prominent in learning to read in opaque orthographies such as English than in learning to read in more transparent orthographies such as German. It
On that basis the rationale behind this assignment is to further understand the term ‘dyslexia’, to consider the definition and diagnosis, as well as the barriers to learning it can generate. Consideration will also be given to the strategies that can be employed to assist learning, as well as promote the
Shaywitz, S. & Shaywitz, B. (2005). Dyslexia (Specific Reading Disability). Biological Psychiatry, 57(11), 1301-1309. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2005.01.043
This article described reading difficulties aligned to the Simple View of Reading (as cited in Gough & Tunmer, 1986). They went into depth about three types of poor readers: (a) dyslexia- those with poor decoding, (b) language comprehension- poor reading comprehension, and (c) listening comprehension- impairments in both decoding and language comprehension. Further, they broke down how each reading difficulty is believed to manifest, is measured, and what it specifically affects.
Since dyslexia is a neurological condition along with difficulties with different aspects of reading dyslexia can have cognitive aspects as well, such as speech perception, recognizing and manipulating the basic sounds in a language, language memory, and learning the sounds of the letters (citation). All in all, up to 10% of the population is predicted to have some form of dyslexia therefore it is imperative that educators are able to identify these students and know strategies that can help them early on in their formal
Dyslexia refers to a specific difficulty in learning to read and write. However this is not the only difficulty that children with dyslexia experience and there are variations of their symptoms. These problems appear to stem from fundamental difficulties in the rapid processing and sequencing of phonological information in short term memory. These children also have difficulties with associations with letters and their sounds. Learning their left from right also is difficult. In the
Dyslexia was first diagnosed in 1896: since then there have been many new developments in its diagnosis and treatment (French, 2013). Dyslexia is a learning disability that affects reading, writing, and spelling in children and adults. Depending on the individual the diagnosis of dyslexia can be mild or severe (French, 2013). The following word “cat”, is a simple word to read, however a dyslexic would read it “ Tac, act, tca, atc”. Now that was not as easy as reading it as a person with no dyslexic disorder. Oftentimes, dyslexics confuse the letters of a word, and they are turned around or jumbled up because they look too similar. Dyslexic Individuals have to put more energy and effort into reading and are more easily distracted than the average person. When a person has dyslexia, his/her brain takes longer to make connections, and he/she has trouble matching the letters on the page with the sounds the letters make. Christian Boer, a graduate of the Utrecht Art Academy, created a new font to make reading easier for people, like himself, who have dyslexia.
Ms. Olsen is a student that suffers from ADHD. She enjoys her literature class but she has a hard time paying attention sometimes. She also suffers from dyslexia which makes it hard for her to read words. The curriculum have accommodated her with tools that have made her more enthusiastic about class.
would help to facilitate word recognition. The evidence also suggests that in most cases deficits in phonological skills associated with the ability to use speech codes are likely causes of dyslexia. Definitions of phonological processing are complex, Arrow (2016) defines
The hypothesis that there is a significant visual component in dyslexia was supported by the research findings and furthermore, is echoed in current developmental dyslexia literature. The study found that dyslexic children had poorer performance on categorization tasks (letters, digits, and symbols) for both verbal and non-verbal stimuli. However, the study was limited and contradictory in some findings and demonstrates a need for further research to investigate such areas. Specifically, future research must address symbol processing and compare performance of typically-developing children to dyslexic children. Lobier, Zoubrinetzky, and Valdois (2012) found that children with developmental dyslexia demonstrated deficits in symbol processing compared to normal counterparts, while Ziegler et al. (2010) found that typically-developing children and dyslexic children had equal performance on symbol processing tasks. Additionally, future dyslexia research could include variables such as crowding effects and binocular vision involvement to address other visual components that may be involved with dyslexia
The most hopeful intervention is early intervention. Classroom intervention and pullout remedial approaches have shown positive results. Prevention programs that focus on phonemic awareness, phonics, and meaning of text in reading instruction of early grades can reduce the base rates of at-risk dyslexic students to below five percent. It will also significantly improve the core reading skills of the weakest readers in early grades. For older students, intervention programs that are described as strategy based and direct instruction have been most effective for their grade level. The combination program has been evaluated with sever dyslexic students in randomized experimental designs with control groups. This approach resulted in better standardized reading measures. Students with word-reading abilities below the fifth percentile before the implementation of the explicit programs tested in the average range of word identification following the interventions (Shaywitz, Morris, & Shaywitz,
Dyslexia is a lifelong condition that implicates a person's reading ability, caused by a defect in the brain where it has difficulty in processing graphic symbols. Also referred to as a “reading disorder” or a “reading disability”, Dyslexia can also affect a person's writing, spelling and even speaking ability.
In acquired dyslexia, especially on patients with the brain damage, it may develop under the selective process suggesting the dyslexia, at least to some extent, is a neuroanatomical distinct process. If the lesion disrupts the visual semantic route in specific, then the patient needs to rely upon the phonological route for reading. These patients may read regular words in a relatively easy process. The same patients may also be successful at reading the artificial nonsense words that are subject to construct using the standard phonetic rules, such as ‘midbod .' More so, since surfacing of dyslexics needs to rely on the phonetic analysis on the entire basis, they tend to be making several spelling errors that are phonetically plausible, but also visually incorrect. It justifies why patients diagnosed with dyslexics tend to be making phonetic regularization errors. Not all types of acquired dyslexics fall entirely on the phonological and visual developmental categories. Most patients diagnosed with dyslexia display the combination of both phonological and visual problems, and
According to Chall (1983) the primary deficit associated with dyslexia is phonological awareness and there are three symptoms; Inaccurate and inefficient single word recognition, Difficulty sounding out (decoding) unfamiliar words, and Inaccurate spelling that is the result of it. As a result of phonological deficit, students with dyslexia exhibit slow and inaccurate text reading, poor reading comprehension, varied difficulties with the symbol code for reading and
More than seventy learning disability categories appear to be related to, or varieties of, dyslexia. The methods described in The Gift of Dyslexia and The Gift of Learning have been used successfully to provide varying degrees of improvement for all the following conditions.
Many studies have endeavoured to recognize the nature of the cognitive disorders linked with and possibly accountable for developmental dyslexia. The theory of a ‘phonological deficit’ as the cerebral source of developmental dyslexia is now largely established. Phonological (letter-sound) deficit is a theory that originates from indication that subjects with dyslexia incline to do badly on assessments which measure their capacity to decipher gibberish using conventional phonetic rules. It also states that there is a large connection between problems in joining the sounds of letters and reading delays or failure in young children (Vellutino, et al, 2004).