• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Dyslexia

theyithian said:
I thought that was the gay crocodile.
Click to expand...

Aaaargh! I just reported your comment in error!

This was to be my response:

Surely you mean a galligator?
 
Or, indeed, that Indian one - the gayrial.
 
Wider letter spacing helps dyslexics read: study
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-06-w ... exics.html
June 4th, 2012 in Psychology & Psychiatry

European researchers said Monday that offering reading materials with wider spacing between the letters can help dyslexic children read faster and better.

In a sample of dyslexic children age eight to 14, extra-wide letter spacing doubled accuracy and increased reading speed by more than 20 percent, according to the study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Scientists believe the approach worked because people with dyslexia are more affected than normal readers by a phenomenon known as "crowding," which makes a letter harder to identify when it is close to other letters.
"Our findings offer a practical way to ameliorate dyslexics' reading achievement without any training," said the study led by Marco Zorzi of the department of general psychology at Italy's University of Padova.

Researchers studied 54 Italian and 40 French dyslexic children, giving them a text made up of 24 short sentences to read in either standard or expanded letter spacing.

In the standard text, the words were printed in Times-Roman font with a 14 point print size (1 point = 0.353 mm in typesetting standards).
In the expanded text, the space between letter was increased by 2.5 points, so the "space between i and l in the Italian word il (the) was 2.7 pt in normal text vs. 5.2 pt in spaced text," said the study.

The space between lines of text was also increased to show a proportional amount of white space on the page.

The children were given either French or Italian texts according to their native language, and the regular and extra-space sessions were scheduled two weeks apart to minimize the effect that memorization might have on reading speed.

Not only did dyslexic children read faster, but the greatest benefits were observed in children who had the most problem identifying letters.
Children without reading challenges showed no increase in reading speed when given materials in which letters were more widely spaced, suggesting that the benefit was unique to children with dyslexia.

"Practitioners only know too well that getting dyslexic children to read more is a key component in achieving long-lasting improvements in reading skills," said the study.

"Extra large letter spacing, which could even be optimized adaptively on an individual basis, can certainly contribute to achieving this goal."

Dyslexia is a developmental disorder that is linked to a problem in the part of the brain that interprets language, and can run in families. Extra tutoring and an intense focus on reading are the most frequently advocated treatments.
The disorder, which has no cure, is estimated to affect about 15 percent of Americans.
Co-authors on the study came from Aix-Marseille University and France's Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.

The research was funded by grants from the Institute for Maternal and Child Health in Italy, the European Research Council Grant and the University of Padova.

More information: “Extra-large letter spacing improves reading in dyslexia,” by Marco Zorzi et al. PNAS, 2012.
Click to expand...
 
Some new findings. Between five and ten percent of the world's children suffer from dyslexia I wouldn't have thought it was that high. Over-diagnosing?

Dyslexia Caused by Faulty Signal Processing in Brain; Finding Offers Clues to Potential Treatments
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 104938.htm

This figure compares the situation in the brain of dyslexics and the control group. The blue area depicts the auditory cortices and the green area represents the medial geniculate bodies. (Credit: © MPI for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences)

ScienceDaily (Aug. 7, 2012) — Many children and adults have difficulties reading and writing, and the reason is not always obvious. Those who suffer from dyslexia can exhibit a variety of symptoms. Thanks to research carried out by Begoña Díaz and her colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, a major step forward has been made in understanding the cause of dyslexia.

The scientists have discovered an important neural mechanism underlying dyslexia and shown that many difficulties associated with dyslexia can potentially be traced back to a malfunction of the medial geniculate body in the thalamus. The results provide an important basis for developing potential treatments.

People who suffer from dyslexia have difficulties with identifying speech sounds in spoken language. For example, while most children are able to recognise whether two words rhyme even before they go to school, dyslexic children often cannot do this until late primary school age. Those affected suffer from dyslexia their whole lives. However, there are also always cases where people can compensate for their dyslexia. "This suggests that dyslexia can be treated. We are therefore trying to find the neural causes of this learning disability in order to create a basis for improved treatment options," says Díaz.

Between five and ten percent of the world's children suffer from dyslexia, yet very little is know about its causes. Even though those affected do not lack intelligence or schooling, they have difficulties in reading, understanding and explaining individual words or entire texts. The researchers showed that dyslexic adults have a malfunction in a structure that transfers auditory information from the ear to the cortex is a major cause of the impairment: the medial geniculate body in the auditory thalamus does not process speech sounds correctly. "This malfunction at a low level of language processing could percolate through the entire system. This explains why the symptoms of dyslexia are so varied," says Díaz.

Under the direction of Katharina von Kriegstein, the researchers conducted two experiments in which several volunteers had to perform various speech comprehension tasks. When affected individuals performed tasks that required the recognition of speech sounds, as compared to recognize the voices that pronounced the same speech, magnetic resonance tomography (MRT) recordings showed abnormal responses in the area around the medial geniculate body. In contrast, no differences were apparent between controls and dyslexic participants if the tasks involved only listening to the speech sounds without having to perform a specific task. "The problem, therefore, has nothing to do with sensory processing itself, but with the processing involved in speech recognition," says Díaz. No differences could be ascertained between the two test groups in other areas of the auditory signalling path.

The findings of the Leipzig scientists combine various theoretical approaches, which deal with the cause of dyslexia and, for the first time, bring together several of these theories to form an overall picture. "Recognising the cause of a problem is always the first step on the way to a successful treatment," says Díaz. The researchers' next project is now to study whether current treatment programmes can influence the medial geniculate body in order to make learning to read easier for everyone in the long term.

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Max-Planck-Gesellschaft.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

Journal Reference:

B. Diaz, F. Hintz, S. J. Kiebel, K. von Kriegstein. Dysfunction of the auditory thalamus in developmental dyslexia. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2012; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1119828109
Click to expand...
 
Some new findings. Between five and ten percent of the world's children suffer from dyslexia I wouldn't have thought it was that high. Over-diagnosing?
Click to expand...

I would say so, unless (as sometimes appears to be the case) the definition of dyslexia has been widened so as to include anyone who is a slow reader.

In any case I thought dyslexia was virtually unknown in other languages, eg Spanish?
 
The scientists have discovered an important neural mechanism underlying dyslexia and shown that many difficulties associated with dyslexia can potentially be traced back to a malfunction of the medial geniculate body in the thalamus. The results provide an important basis for developing potential treatments.
Click to expand...

That's an extravagant hope. I'm doubtful you could specifically target the medial geniculate-a small mass buried practically in the centre of the brain.
 
5-10%, nonsense.

Especially given that the rate of occurrence is tiny or doesn't exist at all in China, Korea or Japan. That plus misdiagnosis makes the numbers most unlikely.

And the fact that studies have shown the same individual can be dyslexic in one language but not another (at which he has the same level of proficiency) leads most experts to conclude that 'dyslexia' is an umbrella term being used to describe a range of language-specific impediments and not one over-arching phenomena. Dyslexia is English is probably a lack of aptitude at phonemic analysis. Elsewhere, it could be something else.

'Dyslexia' in this situation is about as helpful as 'mad'.
 
Adults with dyslexia improve when pushed to read faster
Success of program challenges commonly accepted slow-down approaches.

Regina Nuzzo
12 February 2013

Adults who have trouble reading might do better if they take less time over it.
SIGRID OLSSON/PHOTOALTO/CORBIS
http://www.nature.com/news/adults-with- ... er-1.12420

People with dyslexia are often taught to work through reading by ‘slowing down and sounding it out’. Results from a computerized training program, however, suggest that ‘hurrying up and getting on with it’ might be a better practice. Accelerated training could improve both reading fluency and comprehension, with lasting benefits.

The training protocol speeds up reading by displaying a sentence and then systematically erasing it, letter by letter, in the direction of reading. It then asks questions to test the reader's comprehension. If the questions are answered correctly, the software moves on to the next sentence but gives the reader 2 milliseconds — the duration of an eyeblink — less reading time per letter.

“We essentially tell the brain, ‘Hey, you can do better,’” says Zvia Breznitz, a psychologist at the University of Haifa in Israel and lead author of the study. “We slowly break the cycle of bad reading.”

After training with the programme for three 20-minute sessions per week for two months, students with dyslexia read about 25% faster than before and comprehended more, even when allowed to read at their own pace. Their test scores ended up statistically indistinguishable from those of typical readers who had not gone through training, and the gains were still apparent six months after training ended. Typical readers also benefited from the training, but their gains were neither as significant nor as long-lasting as the dyslexics'. The findings are published today in Nature Communications1.

“The results are exciting,” says Guinevere Eden, a neuroscientist at Georgetown University in Washington DC.

Dyslexia is thought to affect between 5 and 10% of the world’s population2, but there is no gold-standard method for treating it.

All at once
Many drills emphasize painstakingly breaking down words into sound packages, but such techniques can require several hours a day of drills and often lead only to short-term gains or to no improvements at all in reading speed and comprehension3. “This study tackles it from the other side and directly works on fluency,” says Eden.

Why the method works is not entirely clear, the researchers say. The disappearance of letters might compel readers to attend more closely to the text, without dawdling and letting important contextual information slip out of limited short-term memory stores. And by consistently challenging readers to work faster than before, the training may allow new, more efficient habits to nudge out old ones. “I’m always amazed at the new ways the brain has of solving old problems,” says Avi Karni, a neuroscientist at the University of Haifa and a co-author of the study.

The researchers hope to follow up their findings with an imaging study that could help to explain which brain areas are being used during the training. Eden also wonders whether the programme might help deaf readers, who, like those with dyslexia, have trouble with 'sounding out' words and tend not to read as well as hearing peers.

Nature doi:10.1038/nature.2013.12420

References
Breznitz, Z. et al. Nature Commun. 4, 1486 (2013).
Show context
Siegel, L.S., Paediatr. Child Health. 11(9), 581–587 (2006).
Show context
Alexander, A.W. & Slinger-Constant, A.-M., J. Child Neurol. 19 no. 10 744–758 (2004).
Show context

Related stories and links

From nature.com
Dyscalculia: Number games
09 January 2013
Dyslexic diversity
07 April 2008
Dyslexia: Lost for words
25 September 2003

From elsewhere
British Dyslexia Association
The International Dyslexia Association
UK National Health Service on dyslexia
Click to expand...
 
" . . . there is no gold-standard method for treating it."

For the simple reason that a multitude of problems are conflated into one under the portmanteau heading of dyslexia.

I have spent time with hundreds of dyslexic pupils - few of them exhibit the same symptoms or respond the same way to attention. A significant number seem to be pressed into Special Needs status by over-anxious parents. But, for many, the gap between their evident intelligence and their ability to express it on paper is a matter of extreme frustration.

Many are model pupils but it does strike me as curious that few are ever fluent or active in the less demanding fields of texting and online media. They also tend to be more than usually dependent on their teachers and assistants, despite evidence of quite high intelligence in some cases. Social isolation due to Special Needs status may explain this in part but I wonder if it might be turned around: are some of these pupils more than usually dependent on adults from the start?

So much snake-oil in this field already. I doubt if this is a new suggestion. I do wish we could get away from the catch-all dyslexia label. The trouble is we will only bring in dozens of new syndromes. :?

edit: "fields" preferred to repetition of "media" in penultimate paragraph.
 
I actually have sex daily.

I mean, dyslexia.


;)
 
Dyslexia 'seen in brain scans' of pre-school children
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-23679363
By Michelle Roberts
Health editor, BBC News onlineMRI scan

Scans may reveal early markers of dyslexia, experts hope

Brain scans may allow detection of dyslexia in pre-school children even before they start to read, say researchers.

A US team found tell-tale signs on scans that have already been seen in adults with the condition.

And these brain differences could be a cause rather than a consequence of dyslexia - something unknown until now - the Journal of Neuroscience reports.

Scans could allow early diagnosis and intervention, experts hope.

The part of the brain affected is called the arcuate fasciculus.

Continue reading the main story
“
Start Quote

We do not know how many of these children will go on to develop problems. But anyway, we want to intervene before that”

Prof John Gabrieli
Lead researcher
Shrinkage
Among the 40 school-entry children they studied they found some had shrinkage of this brain region, which processes word sounds and language.

They asked the same children to do several different types of pre-reading tests, such as trying out different sounds in words.

Those children with a smaller arcuate fasciculus had lower scores.

It is too early to say if the structural brain differences found in the study are a marker of dyslexia. The researchers plan to follow up groups of children as they progress through school to determine this.

Lead researcher Prof John Gabrieli said: "We don't know yet how it plays out over time, and that's the big question.

"We do not know how many of these children will go on to develop problems. But anyway, we want to intervene before that, and the younger you do that the better. We already know that reading programmes and interventions can really help."

Early intervention
In the study, the volume of the left arcuate had a particularly strong link with poorer pre-reading test results.

The left arcuate fasciculus connects an area of the brain involved in speech production with another used to understand written and spoken language.

A larger and more organised arcuate fasciculus could aid in communication between those two regions, the researchers say.

Prof Gabrieli said: "This brain area fits with a lot of what we already know. So it's a good candidate."

A few years ago, US doctors described the case of a child who developed dyslexia after radiation treatment for a brain tumour. The same brain region - the arcuate fasciculus - was involved.

A spokeswoman for the British Dyslexia Association said brain imaging was providing "increasing evidence" of notable differences between the brains of people with and without dyslexia.

"It is particularly exciting to envisage a future where this technology could be part of a cluster of indicators that would identify a risk of dyslexic difficulties," she said.

But she said there needed to be far more research to determine if in the future it might be possible to diagnose dyslexia with a brain scan
Click to expand...
 
Deconstructing Dyslexia
Adults with dyslexia may have trouble reading because of a dysfunctional connection between language-processing areas of their brains.
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles. ... -Dyslexia/
By Tracy Vence | December 5, 2013

The functional and structural connection (blue arrow) between frontal and temporal language areas of the brain is impaired in individuals with dyslexia.
BART BOETS

Scanning the brains of adults with dyslexia and normal readers, scientists found no differences in phonetic representations—the brain’s interpretations of human speech sounds. Rather, adults with dyslexia may have difficulty processing speech sounds because of a dysfunctional connection between frontal and temporal language areas of the brain that impairs access to otherwise intact phonetic representations.

The findings, published today (December 5) in Science, came as quite a surprise to the research team. “The main aim of the study was to finally objectively demonstrate that the quality of phonetic representations is impaired in individuals with dyslexia,” said Katholieke Universiteit Leuven’s Bart Boets, who led the work. But that’s not at all what they found. “Even while scanning throughout the whole brain for local regions where the representations may be impaired . . . we could not find a single region with inferior phonetic representations in dyslexics as compared to typical readers,” Boets explained in an e-mail.

“This is the first paper that really went head on in trying to answer this question, surprisingly,” child and adolescent psychiatrist Fumiko Hoeft from the University of California, San Francisco, told The Scientist in an e-mail. “If true . . . this has tremendous implications for thinking about the cause of the disorder and also the treatment.”

The team first used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and an approach called multi-voxel activity analysis (MVPA) to generate whole-brain visualizations from 23 adults diagnosed with dyslexia and 22 adult controls listening to different speech sounds. Finding similarly intact phonetic representations in both groups, the team considered alternate hypotheses, assessing the structural and functional connectivity in participants’ brains. The researchers found that dyslexic individuals showed decreased connectivity between the superior temporal regions that were found to support intact phonetic representations in the initial analysis and the left inferior frontal regions that are known to be involved in more complex phonological processing.

“There have been different opinions in the field about whether dyslexia has something to do with a broken down signal early on in the auditory system, or whether it’s elsewhere, higher up in the brain area,” said Guinevere Eden, who directs the Center for the Study of Learning at Georgetown University, and was not involved in the work.

Advances in neuroimaging techniques like fMRI have been a boon for the field when it comes to “understanding the brain and behavioral relationships in dyslexia,” Washington University radiologist Todd Richards told The Scientist in an e-mail. Boet’s team, in particular, “has capitalized on the use of the advanced brain imaging techniques,” Richards noted, though he added that there are higher resolution technologies out there that, when used in combination, could help improve “our understanding of phonological processing and its connections.”

“For complex disorders like dyslexia . . . fMRI results have to be seen as part of a broader consensus, alongside other tools such as EEG, MEG, electrophysiology and model systems research,” agreed Mike Tyszka from the Caltech Brain Imaging Center, who was not involved in the work. “So perhaps the greatest challenge is how to integrate all these disparate data into a consistent and rigorously validated picture of brain function.”

Boets and his colleagues suggest that their work could have therapeutic implications. Specifically, the realization that a dysfunctional connection within the brain may be to blame could lead to new strategies for helping people with dyslexia learn to read more fluently. “I think, for instance, about innovative, noninvasive brain stimulation techniques—like paired-associative transcranial magnetic stimulation—that might be used for this aim,” said Boets.

“This paper, by telling us more about at what level in the brain things break down, can help in directing interventions,” Eden said.

B. Boets et al., “Intact but less accessible phonetic representations in adults with dyslexia,” Science, 342: 1251-54, 2013.
Click to expand...
 
Dyslexia may not exist, warn academics

Experts at Durham and Yale Universities are calling for the term ‘dyslexia’ to be abandoned because it is unscientific and lacks meaning

Millions of children may have been wrongly diagnosed as dyslexic after academics found the condition probably does not exist.

Experts at Durham and Yale Universities are calling for the term ‘dyslexia’ to be abandoned because it is unscientific and lacks meaning.

They claim resources are being wasted by putting youngsters thought diagnostic tests and say the umbrella term is used too readily for children who often display vastly different reading problems.

In the book The Dyslexia Debate, Professor Julian Elliott, a former teacher of children with learning difficulties, said more focus should be put on helping children to read, rather than finding a label for their difficulty.

The author, a professor of education at Durham University, said: "Parents are being woefully misled about the value of a dyslexia diagnosis.

"In every country, and in every language, a significant proportion of children struggle to master the skill of reading and some will continue to find it difficult throughout their childhood and into adulthood.

"Typically, we search for a diagnostic label when we encounter problems because we believe that this will point to the best form of treatment.

"It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the parents and teachers of children with reading difficulties believe that if the child is diagnosed as dyslexic, clear ways to help them will result.

"Research in this field clearly demonstrates that this is a grave misunderstanding."

The authors found that symptoms found in one person leading to a diagnosis of dyslexia are often absent in another person similarly diagnosed. Therefore a typical education invention for one pupil may not help another who has also been diagnosed with dyslexia.

While the researchers do not question the existence of the real, sometimes complex, problems some people have with reading, they are critical of the term "dyslexia" because it is too imprecise.

They suggest the key task for professionals is to spot reading difficulties early in any child and intervene as quickly as possible rather than search for a questionable diagnosis.

Children are diagnosed with dyslexia for a range of reasons including those whose difficulty in reading is unexpected, those who show a discrepancy between reading and listening comprehension or pupils who do not make meaningful progress in reading even when provided with high-quality support.

The NHS estimates that 4-8 per cent of all schoolchildren in England have some sort of dyslexia.

Dr Gay Keegan, District Senior Educational Psychologist for Hampshire County Council, said: “As an applied educational psychologist I do not find the term ‘dyslexia’ helpful since there appears to be no unifying identifying characteristics, prognosis or response to interventions which all people with ‘dyslexia’ share.

“So, rather than considering a single entity, I find it helpful to consider different reasons for reading difficulties, using a functional analysis rather than looking for a label.

“My approach involves assessing what the child can do and what they find difficult, assessing and enhancing their learning opportunities and measuring their response to well-delivered, evidenced-based interventions over time.”

However charities have challenged their assessment claiming that the term is important and should not be dropped.

Dr John Rack, head of research, development and policy, for Dyslexia Action insisted the term retained a scientific and educational value.

He said: "We don't buy the argument that it is wasteful to try to understand the different reasons why different people struggle.

"And for very many, those reasons fall into a consistent and recognisable pattern that it is helpful to call dyslexia.

"Helpful for individuals because it makes sense out of past struggles and helpful for teachers who can plan the way they teach to overcome or find ways around the particular blocks that are there."
Click to expand...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/ed ... emics.html
 
I am aware of cases of 'dyslexia' which turned out to be eyesight problems when properly investigated - could have been cured by glasses/contact lenses if properly investigated earlier. Isn't the same as saying there is no such thing as dyslexia, more that it is too readily diagnosed before other possibilities have been eliminated?

And once you are so labelled you are stuck with it.
 
Isn't the same as saying there is no such thing as dyslexia, more that it is too readily diagnosed before other possibilities have been eliminated?

And once you are so labelled you are stuck with it.
Click to expand...

Indeed. The problem I think is not so much that it does not exist, but that it is hugely over-diagnosed. The "classic" symptoms of dyslexia have been replaced with an approach which labels all slow readers as dyslexic. Indeed, parents clamour for such a disgnosis for their child. I agree that labelling is counterproductive and is likely to encourage the child to think their difficulties are set in stone when as you say, something as simple as a pair of glasses or a change in diet could transform them.
 
When dealing with customers at work, I am baffled at how often I hear them say they are dyslexic. It's feels like an epidemic.
 
Xanatic* said:
When dealing with customers at work, I am baffled at how often I hear them say they are dyslexic. It's feels like an epidemic.
Click to expand...
Some of them might be, others are just bad at spelling.
 
Quake42 said:
The problem I think is not so much that it does not exist, but that it is hugely over-diagnosed. The "classic" symptoms of dyslexia have been replaced with an approach which labels all slow readers as dyslexic.
Click to expand...

Have their been changes in the benchmarks or procedure? and is this a geographical phenomenon?

I do know that the pre-1970s attitude of "this child is retarded full stop" has become more nuanced.
 
We all show signs of dyslexia at some times, especially when we type too fast, or we are tired, but it is not the same as a true dyslexic, who have this all the time I do not think this is a myth, for me, as long as we can read what it says, who cares how it is spelt
 
Typos and dyslexia are not really the same thing.
 
It's not even fake dyslexia.
 
Are you deliberately trying to cause an argument, I am sure you know what I am saying
 
Yes, you are equating dyslexia with sloppy typing.
 
We sometimes transpose one letter with another, or number, that is what i am saying, dyslexia does the same thing, but when we do it it is not dyslexia, obviously, but we do say damn, ive got dyslexia. That is what i am saying
 
I have a very mild case of Dyscalculia - I choose not to drive as the spatial co-ordination I have is just not good enough. I can just about do simple mental arithmetic but have to 'convert' it in my head to a visual thing (blocks and blobs). I managed to scrape a maths O level purely by learning the shape of formulae and doing it hundreds of times in my own time.

I can grasp the concepts of adding/subtracting and just about 'get' divison and multiplying but often mis-see digits and sometimes can't 'see' the difference between, say, 10,000 or 1,000,000 [just had to really concentrate then to type that] . Sense of direction and orientation is shite, too. By dint of twigging I'm pretty rubbish with numbers fairly early on, I've managed to discipline myself into budgeting and managing accounts etc., but it's taken the best part of 30 years and some debt in my late teens/twenties.

However, what is taken in one ability is often given in another and I was taught to read when I was 3 and a bit.

(PS the number 5 is, in my head, a pale blue oblong bar)
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top