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Children with dyslexia may struggle with different aspects of language acquisition, such as mixing up the order of letters and numbers, or issues with sounding out new words. Dyslexia can present itself differently in different children, so it's essential to know what to look out for and how you can help your child.
Children with dyslexia may struggle with different aspects of language acquisition, such as mixing up the order of letters and numbers, or issues with sounding out new words. Dyslexia can present itself differently in different children, so it's essential to know what to look out for and how you can help your child.
Signs to look out for:
Signs to look out for:
- Problems with following directions.
- Trouble with rhyming and sounding out new words.
- Problems with mixing up the order of letters and numbers.
- May seem confused or bored by books and reading.
Things parents can do to help:
Things parents can do to help:
- Engage in joint-reading experiences to promote their interest in reading and books.
- Help your child connect letters to sounds through fun or interactive activities like rhyming games or helping them deconstruct words.
- Keep an open line of dialogue with your child's teachers and work to support your child's academic endeavors.
Quick Facts:
Quick Facts:
- Boys have a higher rate of co-morbid conditions such as ADHD
- This means that boys are often more quickly diagnosed with dyslexia than girls
Biological Factors: Theories
Biological Factors: Theories
Phonological Deficit Theory (PDT)
Phonological Deficit Theory (PDT)
- This theory claims that there are irregularities in parts of the brain associated with language processing that underlie the difficulties dyslexic individuals have with representing, storing, and/or retrieving sounds of written words
- Describes dyslexia as a language specific impairment
- This is closely related to the domains of phonological awareness, verbal short term memory, word retrieval, and recoding in reading and spelling
Visual/Auditory Magnocellular Theory
Visual/Auditory Magnocellular Theory
- Suggests that the underlying cause of dyslexia is not language specific; instead, it is a more general impairment of the visual and/or auditory magnocellular systems
- Evidence related to the visual theory includes:
- Unsteady binocular function
- Reduced motion sensitivity
- Reduced contrast sensitivity
- Evidence linked to the auditory theory includes:
- Lower sensory input for phonological coding as a result of impairment in low-level sensory temporal processing
- When an effort was made to improve auditory temporal processing abilities in dyslexic individuals, their language abilities also improved
Cerebral Deficit Theory (CDT)
Cerebral Deficit Theory (CDT)
- A fairly new theory suggesting that a deficit may be related to impaired function of the cerebellum
- Originated from findings that dyslexics could physically balance as well as control individuals under optimal conditions, but did significantly worse than controls in a dual test
- Dyslexic individuals have been found to have deficits in several functions relying on cerebellar processing
Why so many theories?
Why so many theories?
- Dyslexia is the most carefully studied of all childhood learning disabilities and affects about 5-10% of schoolchildren
- It is a very heterogenous condition: it could manifest in:
- Single letter representation
- 'b' being written/read as 'd'
- Single word representation
- 'boat' becoming 'obta'
- Syntactic level
- A sentence being scrambled
- Single letter representation
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