Health corner; what you should know about Dyslexia

Dyslexia is characterized by difficulty with learning to read fluently and with accurate comprehension despite normal, or above normal intelligenceThis includes difficulty with phonological awareness, phonological decoding, processing speed, orthographic coding, auditory short-term memory, language skills/verbal comprehension, and/or rapid naming
Developmental reading disorder (DRD) is the most common learning disabilityDyslexia is the most recognized of reading disorders, however not all reading disorders are linked to dyslexia.
Some see dyslexia as distinct from reading difficulties resulting from other causes, such as a non-neurological deficiency with vision or hearing, or poor or inadequate reading instruction There are three proposed cognitive subtypes of dyslexia (auditory, visual and attentional), although individual cases of dyslexia are better explained by specific underlying neuropsychological deficits and co-occurring learning disabilities (e.g. an auditory processing disorder, an attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, a visual processing disorder) and co-occurring learning disabilities (e.g. dyscalculia and dysgraphia)Although it is considered to be a receptive language-based learning disability in the research literature, dyslexia also affects one's expressive language skillsResearchers at MIT found that people with dyslexia exhibited impaired voice-recognition abilities

Signs and symptoms: Characteristics of dyslexia In early childhood, early symptoms that correlate with a later diagnosis of dyslexia include delays in speech letter reversal or mirror writing and being easily distracted by background noise. This pattern of early distractibility is partially explained by the co-occurrence of dyslexia and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Although each disorder occurs in approximately 5% of children, 25-40% of children with either dyslexia or ADHD meet criteria for the other disorder. Dyslexic children of school age can have various symptoms; including difficulty identifying or generating rhyming words, or counting syllables in words (phonological awareness), a difficulty segmenting words into individual sounds, or blending sounds to make words,a difficulty with word retrieval or naming problems (see anomic aphasia),[ commonly very poor spelling which has been called dysorthographia or dysgraphia (orthographic coding), whole-word guesses, and tendencies to omit or add letters or words when writing and reading are considered classic signs. Signs persist into adolescence and adulthood with trouble with summarizing a story, memorizing, reading aloud, and learning a foreign language.[38] Adult dyslexics can read with good comprehension, although they tend to read more slowly than non-dyslexics and perform more poorly at spelling and nonsense word reading, a measure of phonological awareness.[39][40] A common misconception about dyslexia is that dyslexic readers write words backwards or move letters around when reading – this only occurs in a very small population of dyslexic readers.[41] Individuals with dyslexia are better identified by reading accuracy, fluency, and writing skills that do not seem to match their level of intelligence from prior observations.

Management

Main articles: Management of dyslexia and Dyslexia interventions

Through compensation strategies and therapy, dyslexic individuals can learn to read and write with educational support There are techniques and technical aids that can manage or even conceal symptoms of the disorder Removing stress and anxiety alone can improve written comprehension.
For dyslexia intervention with alphabet writing systems, the fundamental aim is to increase a child's awareness of correspondences between graphemes (letters) and phonemes (sounds), and to relate these to reading and spelling by teaching him or her to blend the sounds into words. It has been found that training focused towards visual language (reading) and orthographic (spelling) yields longer-lasting gains than mere oral phonological training. Intervention early on while language areas in the brain are still developing is most successful in reducing long-term impacts of dyslexia
There is some evidence that the use of specially tailored fonts may provide some measure of assistance for people who have dyslexia Among these fonts are Dyslexie and OpenDyslexic, which were created with the notion that many of the letters in the latin alphabet are visually similar and confusing for people with dyslexia. Dyslexie, along with OpenDyslexic, put emphasis on making each letter more unique to assist in reading
Ronald Davis describes the alternative compensating skills and abilities some who have dyslexia are able to develop as a gift that can increase the capacity to think and perceive multi-dimensionally and can help further utilize the brain’s ability to alter and create perceptions.Davis acknowledges the benefits of dyslexics visual thinking and provides management solutions to overcoming the challenges faced by dyslexics.