Causes and the Brain

It is difficult to sort out the causes, consequences, and coincidences of dyslexia. Trouble identifying the separate speech sounds and/or learning to pair the sounds to the letters can happen from birth or environmental risk factors (IDA, 2017). Dyslexia is linked to genetic markers and brain scans indicate a more symmetrical brain. Moats and Tolman (2019) share that the planum temporale is where the phonological and orthographic processing systems map phonemes to graphemes or associate speech with printed symbols. In typically developing brains, the planum temporale is larger on the left side of the brain (GreatSchools Staff, 2013).

It is important to focus on the fact that brains can be rewired.

Ultimately, for us to process written text fluently, all of the parts of our reading brain must work together with fluency and synchrony. Their interaction must be smoothly coordinated. Teachers can facilitate these interactions by consciously working to help these processors connect. It's the teacher's job to build cognitive connections among sound, spelling meaning, and context.

Phonological processing is key to how our brains process language when we read. For beginning readers, the more automatic phonological awareness becomes, the better their word recognition, leaving them able to attend to other aspects of the text. Direct instruction in a variety of phonological awareness skills reduces the likelihood of reading failure.