- The ARC - California Edition -

Dyslexia - The Ability to Read

Dyslexia is a family of disorders involving a person’s ability to read. In one form of this disorder is where the patient is unable to identify a sequence of written symbols. The outcome of this condition is that letters or even whole words get turned around. An example of this might be that the simple word “eat” appears to the reader to be “tea”. 

A second form of the disorder is expressed in the inability to translate a visual word into the acoustical equivalent. In this case, the person seems to be unable to learn which symbols represent which sounds. But there are many other forms of dyslexia. With all of these forms, there is one key problem. Seldom is a child with dyslexia found to have any form of this condition until the child is of reading age - usually aged 5 to 6. 

Yet, Dyslexia is the most common learning disability, according to many researchers. It affects an estimated 5 to 15 percent of all children. Here again we face a problem. Many people do not recognize how difficult it is for children with dyslexia to achieve an apparently simple task which others can accomplish effortlessly. 

The reason for writing about this subject at this time is that researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle have reported that they have confirmed chemical differences in the brain function of dyslexic and non-dyslexic children. Their measurement shows that dyslexic children use nearly five times as much brain area as “normal” children in performing simple tasks in communication. 

This team of UW researchers were using a brain-imaging technique. In this test they observed that dyslexics used 4.6 times as much “area of the brain” to achieve the same task involving language. The conclusion of the UW researchers was that dyslexic children work a lot harder and use a lot more energy than do people who do not have this type of communication problem. 

These researchers do not consider that dyslexia involves brain damage. It is considered to be a genetic and neurological disorder. According to UW Professor Virginia Berninger, “when a child has a brain-based disorder, it is treatable, although it may not be curable, just as diabetes is. Dyslexia is a lifelong condition, but dyslexics may learn to compensate for it later in life.” “Dyslexics often have enormous talents in other parts of their brain and shine in many fields.” 

(Research, The Columns, UWash, December 1999)