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| | Dyslexia (Greek. Dys - — “Difficulty with” and Greek. lexis — "words" or "dictionary") is a dysfunction of reading due to dysfunction or underdevelopment of some areas of cerebral cortex. Reading is slowed down, guessing, with phonetic distortions; misunderstanding of read material. It is rarely seen in girls (up to 10 %) and more often in boys, though many people think that the girls are more diligent and can hide their deficiency. Many people suffering from dyslexia have achieved popularity and recognition of both contemporaries and descendants, for example: Leonardo da Vinci, Winston Churchill, Thomas Alva Edison, Jackie Stewart, George Bush, Ooze Osborne Paul Okinfold, Richard Branson, Albert Einstein, Guy Ritchie, Orlando Bloom, Michael Dudikoff, Salma Hayek, Keri Natalie.
Forms of dyslexia and dysgraphia:
Several approaches to the classification of dysgraphia and dyslexia exist in modern logopedics (speech therapy). No standard classification exists and in practice, speech therapists stick to various causes of defects in reading and writing and learning problems, more often relying on the works of senior specialists, who also belonged to the same scientific school.
Phonetic dyslexia and dysgraphia:
Most often found form is phonetic dyslexia and dysgraphia (traditionally termed as acoustic). It is described under different names practically by all authors. In this form of dysgraphia, it is difficult for children to hear sound structure of a word.
They are disoriented in phonation of words, confuse between sounds and merge words with each other. Speech is badly perceived. For correct letter recognition, it is necessary to have fine auditory differentiation of sounds and analyze all acoustic meaning-distinctive features of sound. Phonetic dysgraphia appears while writing the alphabets, which have phonetically similar soundings. Child writes what ever he heard but not what is told to him. The most common mistake is change of vowels even in accented condition. The child understands something correctly and something approximately. Difficulties arise in mastering proper spelling as the child does not appreciate changes in sound on grammatical change of words, does not do necessary abstracts and does not sense the word links. Mistakes are noticed even during reading: children confuse letters, omit consonants in composition and rearrange syllables and reads guessing.
Optical dyslexia and dysgraphia:
Optical dyslexia and dysgraphia (visual in other terms) is caused by instability of visual impressions and representations. In order to learn to read and write, letter vision – alphabetic gnosis is necessary. Each letter differs from other letters, first of all, by its conventionality and is not at all connected, in regard to meaning, with the sound, which it represents. In the history of mankind, letters has got such great value, that a special area is responsible for the letter recognition in left hemisphere of the brain. Disorder of alphabetic gnosis and their spatial representations appear in difficulties in mastering the alphabets, their replacements and distortions while reading and writing. Alphabets, which are identical with respect to graphical representation, and distinguished by additional elements and also alphabets, consisting of identical elements but positioned differently in space, are confused and interchanged. Children, for whom, it is difficult to remember the letter visually, can invert the letter, skip or add an extra hook. Mirror image of letters is found in optical dysgraphia. Mirror image is more often found in left-handers, who can read, write and copy the letter, digit or a word equally in any direction.
Secondary (nonspecific) dyslexia and dysgraphia:
All these kinds of dysgraphia are primary since they are caused by disorder of one of basic preconditions for written speech. Distinctive feature of secondary disorders of reading and writing is the absence of specific preconditions to them. Such children easily differentiate phonemes, are oriented in sound-alphabetic analysis of a word, recognize difficult visual images and do not have restrictions in movements. Essential role in occurrence of secondary dyslexia and dysgraphia is played by concentration deficiency, switching and attention allocation. Bad hearing-speech memory prevents in remembrance of read or dictated text and correct reproduction of it. Speed of activity has a special significance during reading and writing. Children, who for any reasons, cannot write and read in the set speed, hurry up to complete the task and commit varied mistakes. It is possible to think, that they possess all kinds of dysgraphia and dyslexia immediately. However, at less speed, these children read and write fairly well.
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Next week is Dyslexia Awareness Week, and a lot of seminars are going to be held internationally where dyslexic people share their experiences with others. One of the ways to cope with dyslexia is to have a positive and even humorous attitude about it. One popular story told at such seminars is that Andy Warhol was dyslexic, and
when he said everybody is entitled to 15 minutes of fame he really meant 51 minutes. One of such seminars from the last year had a big banner saying
"If you are a dyslexic who can't laugh at yourself... get a file!"
