10 Facts about People with Dyslexia

 

 

 

• Dyslexia is a language-based learning disability. Dyslexia refers to a cluster of symptoms, which result in people having difficulties with specific language skills, particularly reading. Students with dyslexia usually experience difficulties with other language skills such as spelling, writing, and pronouncing words.
   

• Dyslexia affects individuals throughout their lives; however, its impact can change at different stages in a person’s life. For some people, their dyslexia is identified early in their lives, but for others, their dyslexia goes unidentified until they get older.
   

• It is referred to as a learning disability because dyslexia can make it very difficult for a student to succeed academically in the typical instructional environment, and in its more severe forms, will qualify a student for special education, special accommodations, or extra support services.
   

• The exact causes of dyslexia are still not completely clear, but anatomical and brain imagery studies show differences in the way the brain of a person with dyslexia develops and functions. Moreover, most people with dyslexia have been found to have problems with identifying the separate speech sounds within a word and/or learning how letters represent those sounds, a key factor in their reading difficulties.
   

• Dyslexia is not due to either lack of intelligence or desire to learn; with appropriate teaching methods, students with dyslexia can learn successfully.
   

• Dyslexia occurs in people of all backgrounds and intellectual levels.
   

• People with dyslexia can be very bright. They are often capable or even gifted in areas such as art, computer science, design, drama, electronics, math, mechanics, music, physics, sales, and sports.
   

• In addition, dyslexia runs in families; parents with dyslexia are very likely to have children with dyslexia.
   

• Dyslexia is a lifelong condition. With proper help, many people with dyslexia can learn to read and write well. Early identification and treatment is the key to helping individuals with dyslexia achieve in school and in life.
   

• Most people with dyslexia need help from a teacher, tutor, or therapist specially trained in using a multisensory, structured language approach. It is important for these individuals to be taught by a systematic and explicit method that involves several senses (hearing, seeing, touching) at the same time. Many individuals with dyslexia need one-on-one help so that they can move forward at their own pace.

     (from International Dyslexia Association)

 

How Many People Does that Effect?

About 13–14% of the school population nationwide has a handicapping condition that qualifies them for special education. Current studies indicate that one half of all the students who qualify for special education are classified as having a learning disability (LD) (6–7%). About 85% of those students have a primary learning disability in reading and language processing. Nevertheless, many more people—perhaps as many as 15–20% of the population as a whole, or 1 in 5 students—have some of the symptoms of dyslexia, including slow or inaccurate reading, poor spelling, poor writing, or mixing up similar words.

 

 

Characteristics of the Population

Characteristics of students with dyslexia change over time depending on the grade level and/or state of reading (as described by Jeanne Chall in her book, The Stages of Reading Development) that the individual has reached. The following are some signs of dyslexia at different grade levels.

 

Preschool/Kindergarten

At this stage, children are developing the underlying oral language base necessary for learning to read. Signs that indicate possible difficulties with reading acquisition include:

• delay in talking

• difficulty with recognizing and producing rhymes

• difficulty remembering rote information such as letter names (also phone number and address)

• difficulty remembering and following directions
   

Grades 1-3

At this stage, children are developing basic word recognition skills both through the use of word attack strategies and contextual cues. Students with dyslexia will show some of the following characteristics:

• difficulties with learning sound/symbol correspondences

• confusion of visually similar letters (b/d/p, w/m, h/n, f/t)

• confusion of auditorily similar letters (d/t, b/p, f/v)

• difficulties remembering basic sight vocabulary

• problems with segmenting words into individual sounds and blending sounds to form words

• reading and spelling errors that involve difficulties with sequencing and monitoring sound/symbol correspondence such as reversals of letters (past/pats), omissions (tip/trip), additions (slip/sip), substitutions (rip/rib), and transpositions (stop/pots)

• omission of grammatical endings in reading and/or writing (-s, -ed, -ing, etc.)

• difficulty remembering spelling words over time and applying spelling rules
   

Grades 4-8

At this stage, children progressing normally have mastered basic reading skills and are now expected to learn new information form reading. Many students with dyslexia continue to have significant difficulties with developing word recognition skills and therefore have trouble coping with more advanced reading activities necessary to succeed in the upper elementary grades and beyond.

• significant difficulty reading and spelling multisyllabic words, often omitting entire syllables as well as making single sound errors

• lack of awareness of word structure (prefixes, roots, suffixes)

• frequent misreading of common sight words (where, there, what, then, when, etc.)

• difficulties with reading comprehension and learning new information from text because of underlying word recognition difficulties

• if underlying oral language problems exist affecting vocabulary knowledge and grammar, difficulties in comprehension of text will occur

• significant difficulties in writing related to problems in spelling as well as organizing ideas
   

High School, College, and Adult

Students at this stage are expected to analyze and synthesize information in written form as well as acquire factual information. Although many individuals with dyslexia may have compensated for some of their difficulties with reading, others may continue to have problems with automatic word identification.

• continued difficulties with word recognition which significantly affect acquisition of knowledge and ability to analyze written material

• slow rate of reading

• continued difficulties with spelling and written composition

• difficulty with note taking in class

• trouble learning a foreign language

     (From the Hardin Simmons University site)

 

Legislation in Regards to the Education of this Population

Link to Dyslegia, a site dedicated to legislation having to do with dyslexia and reading education

 

Passed Legislation:

 

Americans with Disabilities Act Amendment Act
Approved September 25, 2008; Effective since January 1, 2009
This act was designed to restore the intent and protections of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. The Americans with Disabilities Act was written over eighteen years ago and Congress felt it was time to reexamine and refine it.  While the ADA was intended to include and support dyslexics, it has not been as effective as was hoped.  As the ADA was being reconsidered, Drs. Sally and Bennett Shaywitz spent countless hours educating and urging Congress to restore the ADA to its original intent of protecting people with disabilities, including dyslexia, from discrimination.  Originally enacted in 1990, the law has been limited by court cases on the state and federal levels.  And now a new law, the Americans with Disabilities Amendments Act, is active, thanks to a team effort by the Shaywitzes and other committed friends of The Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity.
 

For more on their work, click here.

 

Tennessee 2013-2014 HB 1735/SB 2002 Dyslexia is Real
Passed January 23, 2014

Defines “dyslexia” as a specific learning disability that is neurological in origin and is characterized by difficulties with accurate or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities. Requires regular teacher in-service training to formally address dyslexia and similar reading disorders and provide effective instruction for students with dyslexia using appropriate scientific research and brain-based multisensory intervention methods and strategies.

 

New Jersey 2012-2013 A3605/S2442 Dyslexia Screening
Passed January 7, 2013

Requires all public school kindergarten students to be screened for dyslexia and other reading disabilities. The committee amended the bill to require that a board of education screen all students for dyslexia and other reading disabilities by the student’s completion of the first grade, rather than during kindergarten.

 

Pending Legislation:

 

New Jersey 2012-2013 AJR49 Dyslexia Awareness Month
In Committee

Designates October of each year as “Dyslexia Awareness Month” in New Jersey. Dyslexia is a learning disability that can hinder a person’s ability to read, write, spell, and sometimes speak; Dyslexia is the most common learning disability in children and persists throughout life with 10 percent of the population or one out of every 10 people in the United States suffering from dyslexia; Dyslexia affected some of the world’s most famous artists, innovators and leaders, including Thomas Edison who began his career as an inventor in Newark, New Jersey and opened the first industrial research lab in Menlo Park, New Jersey; and Woodrow Wilson who attended the College of New Jersey, now known as Princeton University, served as the President of Princeton University, then as the Governor of New Jersey and was the 28th President of the United States; Dyslexia is identifiable with over 90 percent certainty in children ages five and one-half to six and one-half; Children with dyslexia who are identified as dyslexic and provided with effective reading instruction in kindergarten and first grade, will have significantly fewer problems learning to read at grade-level than children who are not identified as dyslexic or provided help until third grade or later.

 

Court Case:

 

Florence County School District Four v. Shannon Carter 1993

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), 84 Stat. 175, as amended, 20 U.S.C. § 1400 et seq. (1988 ed. and Supp. IV), requires States to provide disabled children with a “free appropriate public education,” § 1401(a)(18). This case presents the question whether a court may order reimbursement for parents who unilaterally withdraw their child from a public school that provides an inappropriate education under IDEA and put the child in a private school that provides an education that is otherwise proper under IDEA, but does not meet all the requirements of § 1401(a)(18). We hold that the court may order such reimbursement, and therefore affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.

 

Thus, the Supreme Court ruled that parents can be reimbursed when schools fail to provide FAPE (free appropriate public education).

 

Petition to Grant Accommodations to Dyslexic Students

 

The Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity is asking that Congress require that testing agencies grant accommodations for dyslexic students so that high stakes tests assess ability and not disability, and students are allowed to go forward and succeed in life. High stakes tests must be reliable, valid and accessible to dyslexic children and adults. Without accommodations, highly capable, intelligent students are being denied the opportunity to show what they can achieve and contribute to society.

 

Through change.org, they have created a petition for you to sign and show your support. Click here to sign the petition.

 

Historical Research Articles
“Continuity Between Childhood Dyslexia and Adult Reading” by Dr. Hollis S. Scarborough (1984)

This article examines the correlation between children who struggle with reading and whether or not they eventually catch up to their peers. In essence, does their reading disability stay with them? Contrary to the developmental lag hypothesis, most of the former group remained poor readers in adulthood, in many cases reading more than two standard deviations below levels predicted by IQ. Both within and between groups, very similar relationships were observed between reading level and: word recognition; phonic analysis; prose comprehension; reading speed; spelling ability and error types; and tolerance for visual and semantic text transformations. These findings have implications for how best to address the needs of dyslexic readers.

 

“Phonemic Deficits in Developmental Dyslexia” by Dr. Margaret J. Snowling (1981)

The study explores the possible relationship between reading difficulties and speech difficulties. Two groups of children, dyslexic children and those without, were given single syllabic and multisyllabic words to read. Some of the words were nonsense words and some were real words. The dyslexic group struggled more with the multisyllabic nonsense words, particularly those containing consonant clusters. They also struggled more with repeating the nonsense words, especially the four-syllable words. The findings showed that in both experiments the dyslexic readers were more affected by the phonological complexity of the stimuli than the normal readers were. Hence, it was suggested that the dyslexic readers tested were subject to a general phonemic deficit which affected their ability to process both written and spoken words.

 

Current Research Articles

 

“Neural Mechanisms in Dyslexia” by Sally E. Shaywitz, Maria Mody, and Bennett A. Shaywitz (2006)

This research concludes that there is a cognitive basis for dyslexia. Specifically, it mentions a disruption of left hemisphere posterior neural systems in the brains of child and adult dyslexic readers when they perform reading tasks. This discovery is significant because it validates dyslexia as a disorder, which is necessary for its identification and treatment. These brain imaging findings provide irrefutable evidence to support the absolute necessity of interventions to support readers with dyslexia.

 

“Dyslexia: A New Synergy between Education and Cognitive Neuroscience” by John D. E. Gabrieli (2009)

This research has similar findings in that neuroimaging is used to scientifically identify what happens when readers with dyslexia perform reading tasks. Neuroimaging in children with dyslexia has revealed reduced engagement of the left temporo-parietal cortex for phonological processing of print, altered white-matter connectivity, and functional plasticity associated with effective intervention. Behavioral and brain measures identify infants and young children at risk for dyslexia, and preventive intervention is often effective. Its conclusion is that a combination of evidence-based teaching practices and cognitive neuroscience measures could prevent dyslexia from occurring in the majority of children who would otherwise develop dyslexia.