Understanding Dyslexia

Children with dyslexia:

• Difficulty hearing how words are alike 
  • Rhyming, alliteration
• Great difficulty perceiving phonemes within words -
  • Phoneme segmentation
  • Blending
  • Phoneme deletion
• Thus, words seem like impenetrable whole units

These difficulties impair associating letters with sounds, and all combine to impair decoding.

When decoding is impaired, it is extremely difficult to add letter units (words and word parts) to orthographic memory.

Yes, reading involves sight. But vision is only the first part of the pathway - signals are ultimately processed in the language centers of the brain.

Individuals with dyslexia DO NOT "see" words differently. They don't read words or letters backward or upside down.

It is the reason why interventions that focus solely on the visual modality are not effective:

• Colored lenses or overlay
  • "On balance, systematic reviews to date indicate that there is not yet a reliable evidence base on which to recommend coloured overlays or lenses for the alleviation of reading difficulty or discomfort." Review by Griffiths et al. 92016); and Suttle et al. (2018). 
    
     
• Special "dyslexia" fonts (e.g., "Dyslexie")
  • "Dyslexie font did not lead to improved reading compared to normal "arial" font, nor was it preferred by most students." Kuster et al, (2018), Marinus et al. (2016), Wery et al. (2017).