Overcoming Dyslexia

Question 1

Remediating dyslexia after 3rd grade is more difficult because….

Answer 1

The brain is more plastic in younger children and potentially more malleable for the rerouting of neural circuits.
Once a child falls behind, they must make up thousands of unread words to catch up to their peers who are continuing to move ahead.

Question 2

Matthew Effect

Answer 2

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The kids that can read will read more and become better readers, but the kids that struggle to read will read less and fall further behind.

Question 3

How does dyslexia affect spoken language?

Answer 3

In children with dyslexia, phonemes are less well developed, so when speaking, they might have a hard time retrieving the correct phonemes, and instead choose a phoneme that is similar in sound. So they may often say something like lotion for ocean. Or they might order the phonemes incorrectly and say emeny for enemy.

Question 4

Does preschool make a difference in later reading abilities?

Answer 4

Yes! In the 1980s, British researchers found that a preschoolers phonological aptitude predicts their reading three years later. They also found that training a preschooler to attend to the sounds in spoken words before he goes to school significantly improves his success in learning to read later on.

Question 5

Brocas Área

Answer 5

Named after Paul Broca, a French physician. This part of the brain is located just behind the left temple. Dyslexic children tend to have an overactivation in this area.

Question 6

How many neural pathways are there for reading?

Answer 6

2- one for beginning reading, for slowly sounding out words where words are analyzed, and another that is a speedier pathway for skilled reading where words are automatically recognized. Dyslexics have a glitch in the circuitry, so they tend to use a different pathway.
These pathways are mainly housed in the back of the brain called the posterior reading system.

Question 7

Subvocalize

Answer 7

Saying words under your breath as you read. One means of compensating for reading difficulties. This is a process that utilizes the Brocas area. Under the guidance of this system, dyslexic students can develop an awareness of the sound structure of a word by physically forming the word with their lips, tongue, and vocal cords.

Question 8

Early signs of dyslexia.

Answer 8

1. Delay in speaking
2. Difficulties in pronunciation or baby talk past an appropriate age.
3. Leaving the beginning sounds off of words or inverting sounds within words.
4. Less sensitive to rhyming
5. Difficulty recognizing letters and their sounds.
6. Having a family member with dyslexia, especially a parent or sibling.