Dyslexia Theories May Need To Be Changed

For many years now dyslexia researchers have assumed that the differences in brain activity and structure observed by fMRI scans between groups of dyslexics and non-dyslexics have been caused by dyslexia. I've never seen the question raised about whether these differences could be the result of dyslexia.

Granted, scanning many many babies to determine whether or not the babies have dyslexic brains and then retesting them later after school experiences would be an expensive time-consuming study. That would however help answer the question of whether or not the brain differences first existed in the babies or whether the normal readers were the ones that actually changed.

I've always been impressed with researchers that see unique opportunities to answer difficult questions in a much easier way.The following paragraph is from a story in the New York Times.http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/magazine/03Braille-t.html?pagewanted=2&hpw

'Learning to read is so entwined in the normal course of child development that it is easy to assume that our brains are naturally wired for print literacy. But humans have been reading for fewer than 6,000 years (and literacy has been widespread for no more than a century and a half). The activity of reading itself alters the anatomy of the brain. In a report released in 2009 in the journal Nature, the neuroscientist Manuel Carreiras studies illiterate former guerrillas in Colombia who, after years of combat, had abandoned their weapons, left the jungle and rejoined civilization. Carreiras compares 20 adults who had recently completed a literacy program with 22 people who had not yet begun it. In M.R.I. scans of their brains, the newly literate subjects showed more gray matter in their angular gyri, an area crucial for language processing, and more white matter in part of the corpus callosum, which links the two hemispheres. Deficiencies in these regions were previously observed in dyslexics, and the study suggests that those brain patterns weren’t the cause of their illiteracy, as had been hypothesized, but a result.'

There have been studies about what is called brain plasticity showing that the dyslexic brain can become more like the non-dyslexic brain with reading interventions. That seems to be consistent with the above study.

I'm sure more studies need to be done to confirm that it is the literacy that actually changes the brain rather than dyslexia being a neurological brain difference at least as described by most dyslexia researchers today.

It's likely that the present-day thought is not totally off the mark. But it is also likely that the brain differences so often promoted as being the cause of dyslexia are not entirely correct.

My speculation is that there is an as yet unidentified noise filter function of the brain that makes reading more difficult and is what we call dyslexia. There's been recent research that certainly shows that a likely cause of the phonological processing problems of dyslexics is due to their difficulty separating out sounds in a noisy background. The mechanism behind the difficulty has yet to be discovered.

I have long promoted the concept of visual noise as the cause of visual dyslexia and also the mechanism by which my See Right Dyslexia Glasses remove those visual problems by filtering out the wavelengths of light that caused the visual noise.

For a generalized concept of auditory and visual noise generating the dyslexic's primary assorted problems it is probably best to consider it a higher sensitivity to the noise or a filtering problem.

In the final analysis, it looks like another paradigm of what causes dyslexia is going to be needed.

A Different Look at Dyslexia

I wanted to blog today about dyslexia and the fact that when you're talking to someone about dyslexia it is almost necessary for each person to discuss what their concept of dyslexia is before you start. It is very easy when talking about dyslexia to assume that the person you're talking to has the same understanding about dyslexia as you do. This is often not the case.

This isn't meant to be a serious formal discussion about dyslexia but rather an acknowledgment that when you hear that somebody is dyslexic what that means depends a lot upon who says it.
There seems to be a general confusion about dyslexia and its cause. Partly the confusion is caused because of a lack of vocabulary that differentiates dyslexics by their symptoms and partly it is because dyslexia is often written about as if the latest finding applies to all dyslexics and all prior information about dyslexia is now null and void.

Cultural anthropologists and psychologists have both written about how cultures and individuals who lack words for a particular idea or concept act as if they do not exist. Cultures that lack the word for war never get large amounts of people together to fight other large amounts of people. Dyslexics have individual problems that need to be treated in an individualistic way. Thinking of dyslexia as a single condition with a single cause leads to a belief that a particular intervention should benefit all dyslexics. This does not seem to fit the available data.

In much the same way people of the Arctic have many words that differentiate types of snow and use that information for travel, hunting and other uses, dyslexia needs to be broken down into defined subgroups that lead to different effective interventions based on those subgroups.

A numerical scale for ranking the severity of impairment for each subgroup would also be useful as it appears the severity of dyslexic symptoms vary for any individual and may require a combination of interventions for that individual.

In an overly simplified analogy to fertilizers where 3 numbers indicate the amount of nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus in order, such as 23-8-14 or 2-12-10, and the gardener knows which fertilizer ( intervention) to use for a particular plant problem I propose a similar system for dyslexics.

A 0-10 scale could be used where 0 indicates no effect on reading ability and 10 indicates the most severe effect on reading ability.

The order of the numbers would be:

1) processing problems ( treated perhaps by multi-sensory instruction) let us call this Brain Structure Induced Dyslexia.

2) auditory problems ( treated perhaps by phonics instruction) let us call this Hearing Induced Dyslexia

3) visual problems ( corrected by See Right Dyslexia Glasses ) let us call this Visual Dyslexia

In my analogy a dyslexic that was evaluated as 8-5-1 would likely benefit most from processing intervention followed by auditory intervention. This dyslexic would also be able to understand that 1 type of program very well might not be all he or she needs.

A dyslexic evaluated as 1-2-8 might only need visual correction.

I find the idea that there is one answer for all dyslexics to be hype and believe that all the evidence shows that there are many different types of dyslexia that respond to different interventions. I would argue that a primary step in dyslexia research is missing that doesn't evaluate a dyslexic's problems as they relate to different interventions.

Others might suggest that other categories or subcategories need to be included also. I have no problem with that. It does seem fair to include brain, eyes and ears as possible sources of dyslexia symptoms at the minimum based on information available today.

For those who take issue with giving a numerical value to impairments I would like to suggest that eventually those numbers would likely be able to be correlated to success with their associated interventions.

Flawed Joint Statement about learning Disabilities And Vision.

Here we go again. A new Joint statement from pediatricians and eye doctors who admit they can't diagnose any learning disabilities want to make a blanket statement that learning disabilities and vision aren't related. Here is the PDF file link.

http://www.dys-add.com/VisionTherapy2009.pdf

After reading the statement , my thought is that that they are throwing out the baby with the bath water. It is easy to understand their position and why they felt the statement was needed. It would also be easy to correct their statement with the addition of a few facts. Fact # 1 , there are a minority of dyslexics , properly called visual dyslexics , whose reading problems are caused by visual problems .
Fact #2 , the minority of visual dyslexics is about 10% of the dyslexic population or about 1-1.5% of the general population.

I designed and sell See Right Dyslexia Glasses which act as a universal visual dyslexia filter to remove the visual problems associated with visual dyslexia. I make no claims that the glasses help learning disabilities in general. They do not help dyslexics in general. The small minority of dyslexics with visual dyslexia that can describe visual problems that make reading difficult will have the visual problems removed with the See Right Dyslexia Glasses.

Visual dyslexics are known to have a higher rate of poor depth perception than the general population. Eye doctors that would like to see evidence of the affect of See Right Dyslexia Glasses might consider the fact that they will correct poor depth perception instantly and the poor depth perception will return when the glasses are removed. I mention that because I do not believe that eye doctors have anyway of correcting poor depth perception of visual dyslexics.

The idea presented in the statement that missing letters and moving words leading to reading problems are the result of anything other than visual problems is FALSE. It is really a stretch to say that it is a proven fact. I would suggest that the failure to being able to identify dyslexic individuals is partly because of a poor understanding that some dyslexic problems are visual.

Products that associate learning disabilities in general with visual interventions are likely to fail the majority of people with learning disabilities and at best help a small minority. The Irlen method has had some real success but does a poor job of identification of who will be helped leading to many failures. I have yet found any indication that vision therapy is an effective therapy for learning disabilities. I would describe vision therapy as bait and switch. People want educational help and vision therapy promises to help all with learning disabilities. The eye training provided has never been shown to help anyone.

Reading the joint statement about dyslexia and vision by every type of doctor that can NOT diagnose dyslexia was interesting. In many ways I do agree with their results for the mentioned vision therapies and how they have not been proven as beneficial for learning disabilities and so shouldn't recommended.

I believe that their basic agenda is a result of feeling that promoters of the mentioned vision therapies in the statement do not take a professional approach to the business of selling their products. It is actually hard to argue with the position that the mentioned promoters are not acting professionally.

All doctors are expected to act in a professional and ethical manner.Whether or not those promoters are being ethical depends on if they are knowingly over promoting the products or just incompetent or unaware.One requirement of being a professional doctor is to prescribe treatment to those that need treatment and to not prescribe treatment to those that do not need to be treated. The majority of years of education a doctors receives are slanted towards being able to diagnose who is to be treated for what and how.

I suspect that the joint statement was prepared because The Irlen Method and Vision Therapy are seen as overselling their respective products as being the necessary treatment for learning disabilities. Their sin is at least that learning disabilities is too broad a subject ( or condition) to only have a single treatment and to suggest either as a general treatment.

The joint statement basically says that Vision Therapy has never shown any educational benefit and that Irlen tinted lenses studies have shown mixed results at best. It implies that you can conclude results from flawed studies. By any reasonable standard you can't conclude results from flawed studies.

There is no reason that visual problems should be related to learning disabilities in general. If there is a visual aspect to some learning disabilities it would be a subset of reading problems or dyslexia. This has never been tested in a proper manner and so has not been shown to exist. It is no surprise that something that has never been shown to exist does not have a recommended treatment.

Visual dyslexia is not likely to be proven any time soon by a scientific study.

Dyslexia testing is prohibitively expensive and best case today is what is called dyslexia risk identification followed by some intervention for kindergarten children.This is often called dyslexia testing but has low standards.

By its very nature a generalized dyslexia testing program is going to test all children in an area. The people to give the tests and record results must have some generalized skills with testing and children ( think money ) and testing all the children will take time ( think money). Identification of children at risk ( the bottom half) and intervention ( more money). After intervention you find that 70% have come up to standard and that 30% didn't. They are the children most likely to be dyslexic and can now be tested for dyslexia.

It is also very likely that because of the assumptions on language abilities tested to determine dyslexia risks that visual dyslexics will not be included in the final group as their language skills are often very good.

To conclude , I suggest that See Right Dyslexia Glasses that claim to remove described visual problems , have a money back guarantee , and are easily evaluated in a matter of minutes to at most hours indicate that at least some people with learning disabilities have visual problems where removal of those problems leads to faster more accurate reading with better comprehension.

More information about See Right Dyslexia Glasses and visual dyslexia can be found at The Visual Dyslexia Solution web site

Visual Perception Reading Problems

I have my own views on what causes visual dyslexia reading problems and how to correct them and that is how I developed See Right Dyslexia Glasses. I have always limited my claims to helping those dyslexics that can actually describe their visual problems that make reading difficult and mention that those visual dyslexics are a small minority of dyslexics in general. The Irlen Method has been around a lot longer than my glasses and is much better known.

Irlen convinced people that visual dyslexics needed to be evaluated to determine particular color lenses for particular dyslexics to get help and that works for some visual dyslexics. Irlen doesn't guarantee any positive results and in my opinion oversells her product. Between her claims of correcting the reading problems of visual dyslexics along with helping good readers, autistic and ADHD problems it seems her glasses help everyone with any educational difficulties.

Now ADHD and dyslexia do co-exist in many people so it is likely that there are some people with ADHD that do have visual dyslexia causing reading problems. I just suspect that removing visual dyslexia problems from someone with ADHD doesn't actually do anything for their ADHD and so I personally only market See Right Dyslexia Glasses for visual problems that make reading difficult. My success rate at removing described visual problems that make reading difficult is close to 100% so I can offer a money-back guarantee.

I also eliminated the need for a personal evaluation by designing the See Right Dyslexia Glasses as a universal visual dyslexia filter that is effective for all visual dyslexics.

I read almost everything that is published on the web that concerns dyslexia by having Google alerts for dyslexia, visual dyslexia ,dyslexia research and several more. Today I was reading a blog about visual perception that had a book reference that discussed the Irlen method and at the end mentions See Right Dyslexia Glasses as a more promising approach to the problem of visual dyslexia and here it is below the line.
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Visual Perception

The following is excerpted from A User’s Guide To The Brain, by John J. Ratey, M.D.

I met a psychotherapist from the West Coast named Rolf at a conference in Aspen, Colorado. It was autumn, cool and overcast, yet Rolf was wearing yellow-tinted sunglasses. I just thought, Oh, it’s the California thing. But Rolf, age sixty-eight, had discovered only two years earlier that he had a visual-processing problem. He had begun to work with dyslexics when he retired from active practice, and in studying all he could, he learned about a technique called the Irlen method for helping a small subset of dyslexics.

Certain dyslexics have difficulty reading because as they move their eyes from left to right across a line of type, the letters seem to shimmer… they move. The affected individual can’t keep track of the words, and so has to struggle mightily to read. The Irlen idea was that if such a person looked at written material or any fine details through a certain type of filtering lens, the shimmering would stop.

Rolf had been tormented all his life with the idea that he was not as smart as he thought he was. It had taken him much longer than other students to study. He was smart enough to get by, and got his medical degree by forcing himself to listen well and ask lots of questions. Indeed, his first love was neurology, but that required much more detailed reading than psychology, which relied more on talking and listening, so he ended up becoming a psychiatrist. He had always loved literature, but just never read it because it was too much of an ordeal.

Upon discovering that different-colored Irlen lenses helped certain dyslexics, Rolf drove to his neighborhood pharmacy, picked up a magazine, and began trying on different-colored sunglasses. He tried blue, then brown. Nothing happened. But then he put on a $5 pair of yellow tinted lenses, and began to read the magazine. The words stood still! He read it more easily than anything he had ever tried to read before in his life. He was elated.

Rolf was already wearing glasses for common farsightedness. He hurried to his ophthalmologist to explain his discovery, and together they ordered a pair of Irlen lenses. Today Rolf is a voracious reader.

It’s important to note that Irlen lenses help only a small fraction of people who suffer from dyslexia, which can be caused by many different perceptual or brain processing problems. The shimmering of letters is not a problem that can be diagnosed with routine eye exams. Rolf happens to be in the small group of dyslexics who can be helped by Irlen lenses, was aware enough to apply what he was learning about dyslexia to himself, and was clever enough to find some ready evidence for a possible cure at his local pharmacy.

Rolf needlessly spent much of his adult life with a poor image of himself. Despite his outwardly successful career, he had been in analysis for years trying to understand why he thought of himself as inadequate and lazy, why he had to study so hard to achieve what others did routinely, why he didn’t read the journals as his fellow psychiatrists did or keep track of the news in the papers. His struggle had nothing to do with an intellectual deficit or a motivational problem. It was pure perception.

Just for a moment, look up and examine the scene around you. Be it a sterile office, cozy bedroom or den, allow yourself to sit back and really see the world that surrounds you. In the amount of time that you averted your gaze from this page, your eyes meticulously dissected the image cast upon your retina into approximately 126 million pieces, sent signals for every one of these tiny elements to a transfer station in the thalamus, which then fired neuronal networks to and within the visual cortex, then sent the information to the frontal cortex, and somehow you put the pieces back together into a seamless pattern perceived by you as a sterile office, cozy bedroom, or den.

To add to this complexity, recent physiological findings suggest that all this processing takes place along several independent, parallel pathways. One system processes information about shape, one about color, and one about movement, location, and spatial organization. If you look up and see a clock, the image of its face and the action of its sweeping second hand are being processed independently, despite how unified the image appears. It may seem bizarre to think of vision as functionally subdivided. But how otherwise could a person who has perfect focus and tracking of moving objects be color blind? Some so called blind people who cannot see colors or objects can still see movement.

As humans, our highly convoluted cortex enables us to combine visual messages with other sensory messages and past experiences to give unique meaning to particular visual situations. The sight of a fresh bouquet of red roses will probably have a different effect on me than on the florist who works with roses every day. Most other species do not have cortical convolutions, so the greater part of their visual processing occurs as pure sight. Humans have evolved to process most visual information in the visual cortex.

Since the introduction of the Irlen lenses, a more promising approach has been developed with the See Right Dyslexia Glasses. These glasses, which require no evaluation and are backed by a money-back guarantee, are an affordable risk free option to correct the problems associated with visual dyslexia. For more information, visit the web site at http://www.dyslexiaglasses.com

The Eye M.D. association's inaccurate statement about Dyslexia and Vision

I guess it is too much to expect M.D. Ophthalmologists to actually be able to think their way out of a scientific bag. I expect to be slapped around for my comments here but I actually think that just because people have a biased opinion about a subject they shouldn't expose themselves by acting as if they can make a scientific sounding policy about dyslexia and vision unless they actually understand dyslexia as well as vision and the fact that a minority of dyslexics can describe individually specific visual problems that make reading difficult.

Here is the link to the new policy saying that vision has nothing to do with dyslexia
http://www.aao.org/about/policy/upload/Learning-Disabilities-Dyslexia-Vision-2009.pdf

I see Sally Shaywitz and her husband's fingerprints all over the policy statement. I have always said that phonological problems are indeed the most common dyslexia problem ( regardless of the fact that there are a non trivial amount on non responders to phonological interventions)and that if you want to blindly choose an individual selected in a random manner from a group of dyslexics that phonological intervention has the greatest statistical chance of being helped. That method fails for a non trivial amount of dyslexics sometimes because of visual problems seeing text.

That Shaywitz uses fMRI information to prove the phonological problem relationship to dyslexia in her certain manner while not being able to identify if an individual is dyslexic or not by that method suggests to me that she is reading a little more certainty into the data than is there. I am not trying to criticize her, her star is at its height right now and the AAO believes her as if it is written in stone.

This is going to be a long post so I am going to go out on a limb and say that in all of history that there has never been any single way that Doctors have treated a large group of kids (or people in general) so that the results have been positive for every kid. I am not saying that groups haven't been helped just that a certain amount of collateral damage is acceptable. I guess that is why it is OK to promote drugs that may cause death in a few people as a side effect and OK to promote a single phonological intervention for dyslexics that will have some non responders to the intervention.

Sometimes it is informative to actually read the references that are used to evaluate them for quality and make sure they are inclusive of the information to date. GF Eden did one of the first fMRI studies on dyslexia and vision and found about the same differences that are seen in other areas of the brain : you can see differences between groups of dyslexics and non dyslexics. That study was big news at the time I would think the everyone belonging to the Eye MD association would be familiar with the study. G. Eden went on and studied other areas of the brain related to reading and found the same differences as with vision. The eye MD's included one of Eden's studies just not the one on vision. I always liked the comment from a young girl in her study who said she could read if the words would just stop walking. I have a vested interest in this discussion because I sell glasses that would stop those letters from walking so that girl could read normally.

I can understand the eye MDs being upset with the low quality studies done on vision therapy and colored lenses but just as poor studies don't prove anything positive they also don't prove anything negative. It is not proper to conclude that because a study is very flawed that it proves that something doesn't work, it just still needs to be properly studied.

I have no idea about how effective vision therapy is. Personally, I believe there is no way that claims of 80% of learning problems are vision related can possibly be true so there has to be huge failure rates and since it can take months and thousands of dollars and is never guaranteed I would advise against it until a target group can be identified so that the success rate can be raised to the point that a guarantee could be offered. I just don't see that vision therapy is a viable product at this time.

I don't like the lack of a guarantee and the overselling of colored lenses either. Again the studies done with colored lenses have been poorly designed but are suggestive that a better selected at risk population could increase the success rate. The eye MDs just can't claim that poorly designed studies prove a negative when they don't prove anything.

Just because the eye MDs are embarrassed that anyone would invade their turf with big claims little proof and no guarantees doesn't give them the right to speak from the mount and spew poorly researched and selected articles to get rid of the invaders.

Since I sell and financially guarantee that See Right Dyslexia Glasses remove described visual problems that make reading difficult for a minority of dyslexics I have a dog in this (fight) discussion.

Statistically, dyslexics in general and visual dyslexics in particular have a higher rate of poor depth perception. My glasses restore normal depth perception for that group. It seems that eye MDs can't restore normal depth perception yet but they can measure depth perception. Feel free to challenge my glasses ability to do that if you find a dyslexic with poor depth perception. I run across them occasionally myself.

I think using the FAQ's on a dyslexia site as a reference indicates a sloppy gathering of information to develop a national policy on dyslexia and vision not being related. Also since Eden's study on dyslexia and vision indicating dyslexia and vision are related was of the same excellence as the one you used as a reference
I wonder if the eye MDs did more than read the abstracts. Eden often mentions the non universality of her results as pertains to dyslexics.

Put the policy back on the agenda and do a better job next time. Here is some info on visual dyslexia.

Dyslexia Theories

Another way of looking at the theories of what causes dyslexia is to understand that all are partial explanations of the large condition that is dyslexia.
Together they form a fairly good understanding of what dyslexia is where they all fail when considered individually.

Granted, each theory has believers that claim " This is dyslexia ". If the goal is to understand a particular dyslexic and get help for that particular dyslexic, then the reality is that it needs to be determined which theory applies to that dyslexic so that a focused intervention can be developed.

There seems to be a disconnect between what dyslexia researchers are trying to do ,which is finding the single cause of dyslexia and what is wanted by most dyslexics which is what intervention will help him or her.

I offer as proof the different studies using fMRI to study dyslexia that study
specific areas of the brain ( generally each of which is related to a particular theory of what dyslexia is ). All the studies find the same result of being able to see the difference between groups of dyslexics and non dyslexics but with data overlap between the groups that makes identifying individual dyslexics impossible.

If you have only read the media reports of those studies and have already picked one that you firmly believe is the right result and that what causes dyslexia has been found , I suggest you find and read the researchers conclusions. Not one researcher can claim to evaluate a person by fMRI and determine if he or she is dyslexic.

When different dyslexics have different problems , which is what is observed, how can one theory of one cause be correct. On the plus side you can conclude that indeed these theories are each and every one of them are supported by fMRI
FOR SOME DYSLEXICS BUT NOT ALL .

I personally have developed filter glasses for the minority of dyslexics that fit the criteria of being able to describe a visual problem that makes reading difficult. While that criteria covers a broad range of visual problems that make reading difficult it is narrow enough so that an individual can determine if he or she is in the group.

My point is that while no one theory covers all dyslexics, together they do form a list of problems from which any particular dyslexic is likely to be able to find the cause of his or her dyslexia problems. What is still needed is for the different interventions to determine criteria that will identify which intervention will help which dyslexic.

Until that happens, dyslexia interventions developed for a particular theory will continue to have failure rates due to the simple fact that some dyslexics have problems in other areas that are not addressed.

Dyslexia Misunderstood and Why

I have been reading some blogs that try to explain dyslexia in a few paragraphs and it is just impossible. By pointing out some common short cuts that are taken when writing about dyslexia I hope to promote a more careful reading of the material about dyslexia.

Dyslexia is very difficult to write about because having individualistic symptoms everything needs to be qualified. I thought I would make a couple of comments about what I have read lately. One recent study is being promoted as" Dyslexia Unraveled ". It repeates some generalized meaningless statements.

"In fact, most people who have this disability have average to above average intelligence." This is a nice feel good statement that everyone makes but is often taken to mean that people with below average intelligence never have dyslexia.

Here is the truth. Because dyslexia is easier to detect in people with higher IQ's , diagnosed dyslexics generally have a average or higher IQ.

Many definitions of dyslexia also have a cut off on the low end of the IQ scale where reading difficulties can't be attributed to dyslexia or low IQ because reading standards for low IQ individual don't exist. If you remove low IQ people from consideration as dyslexics of course the remaing dyslexics will tend to have average or higher IQ's

While the feel good statement is important to help dyslexics know that their reading problems are not generally caused by being stupid or slow it does direct the effort to identify dyslexics away from people with lower IQ's. Those unidentified lower IQ dyslexics would also benefit from help so the feel good statement also does quite a bit of harm also.

Consider that the following 2 statements are both true and add nothing of value to understanding of what a person is. Note: the reason both statements can be true is that average people are included and counted in both groups.

1) People generally have average or HIGHER than average IQ's.

2) People generally have average or LOWER than average IQ'.

Here is a statement that is true for both dyslexics and people .

Dyslexics , in common with people , may have lower,higher or average IQ's and as far as science has been able to determine dyslexics do not differ from people in respect to IQ.

I submit that the statement "In fact, most people who have this disability have average to above average intelligence." is true but also misleading and has the potential to divert attention away from dyslexics of lower IQ causing them to be under represented and ignored. This harm very well offsets the advantage of being a feel good statement.

My niche is visual dyslexia so I have to make another comment about another common statement used to define define as being "often exemplified by reversing letters and the order of letters in a word.". Another true statement but not really helpful in understanding dyslexia and reversing letters only adds confusion because so many people with and without dyslexia reverse letters when writing is first encountered and beginning to be mastered.

Early on in school people often reverse letters. This behavior in dyslexics continues longer than it does in people without dyslexia. Early on , because people without dyslexia outnumber those that do, indeed the group of those who reverse letters can have fewer dyslexics than non dyslexics.

There are standards of ranges of how many reversals are common at different ages with the behavior being extinguished in those without dyslexia usually by the second grade.

Without the qualification of age and rate of occurrence, reversing letters as a description of dyslexia is useless and I suspect causes many parents to worry that they have dyslexic children when they do not. Again a counter productive description of dyslexia because it is not qualified.

There are other visual problems , such as seeing vibrating text as an example, that are useful in identifying visual dyslexia because they are not common in the non dyslexic population. Adult visual dyslexics can usually describe their visual problems . Children will often be able to describe their visual problems if how they see the page is discussed. More information about visual dyslexia can be found at www.dyslexiaglasses.com .

About 10% of dyslexics have visual dyslexia as a primary and sole cause of reading difficulties. Most dyslexics have no visual problems and a poorly defined % have both visual and language processing problems.

Which brings us to .
"Once a child is diagnosed, studies have shown that multi sensory learning techniques have helped children with dyslexia a great deal"

All dyslexia intervention techniques have non responders. Because multi sensory instruction does address the most common dyslexia problems it has been proven to be effective for a majority of dyslexics. If no specifics are known except that a person is dyslexic, then in a statistical way it can make sense to use multi sensory instruction. It would be better to try to identify a dyslexic's individual problems and focus the intervention on his or her specific problems.

Visual dyslexics are not going to be have their visual problems addressed by multi sensory instruction. There are also some additional dyslexia related problems that are not addressed that may require different techniques.

We have found the cause of dyslexia or not ! There are 2 major sources of the " cause of dyslexia found". There have been many fMRI studies that have imaged many different areas of the brain to compare dyslexics and non dyslexics. Most have been reported to have identified the cause of dyslexia from a single area of the brain. To date all the studies have had the same result of seeing differences between groups of dyslexics and non dyslexics but with enough overlap of results that individuals can not be identified as dyslexic or not.

If you take the time to read all the fMRI studies and treat them as a single study you would have a much clearer understanding of what the present fMRI research data is telling us.

The following statements seem to be true.

In general every dyslexic will not show positive results in every area of the brain studied.

Ever area of the brain studied will show that some of the dyslexics have problems related to that area.

Every area of the brain studied will show that some of the dyslexics do not have problems related to that area.

The conclusion that seems reasonable is

Different dyslexics have different problems and those problems are related to different areas of the brain. It seems likely that individual dyslexics can have an assortment of problems that are individualistic. It also seems likely that the severity of a dyslexic's reading difficulty will be reflected by differences in severity in the individual areas of the brain wher his or her problems exists.

Another common source of " the cause of dyslexia is found" is from personal accounts that basically say " I am dyslexic , this is my problem, so this is what dyslexia is. ". This personal account often results in an intervention based on that belief and you would expect that intervention to be successful for the % of dyslexics that do indeed have that particular problem and a failure for those dyslexics without that problem.

Ron Davis, "Dyslexia is a Gift" and believes dyslexia problems are caused by the fact that dyslexics think in pictures is one example. The Dore method that promotes a physical exercise program as a cure for dyslexia is another example. Both of these examples claim that their method will help all dyslexics.

Until techniques are developed to identify an individual dyslexic's weaknesses and also identify the best interventions matched to each of them so that the most effective individual plan can be developed, much time and money is going to be wasted .

As I said , my niche is helping visual dyslexics that can describe visual problems that make reading difficult. More information can be found at the visual dyslexia solution where I sell See Right Dyslexia Glasses.

Educational Neuroscience Dyslexia and Special Educational Needs

Too many people think that researchers have already found all the answers to why people are dyslexic by studying the brain. The following article is much broader than my usual focus on visual dyslexia. For those that really want to understand what has and has not been discovered in the field of neuroscience as pertains to dyslexia and special educational needs I think this states the information as well as anything I have read on the web.

It also inplies support for what I have long believed , that the individual educational problems that need to be worked on for the individual are not going to be identified anytime in the near future by imaging techniques. Pen and pencil and verbal type testing is much more likely to produce indications of specific skill deficiencies that need to be addressed for educational success.

While being able to describe visual problems that make reading difficult is a start in being able to define visual dyslexia, I am finding that some dyslexia evaluations are starting to include visual testing also and finding co-existing visual and non-visual problems with much success in removing the visual dyslexia problems with See Right Dyslexia Glasses.

http://www.teachingexpertise.com/articles/educational-neuroscience-where-are-we-3675 >

Are advances in brain sciences useful to the field of education? Dr Jodi Tommerdahl looks at whether breakthroughs in our knowledge of how the human brain works can provide insight into how children learn, particularly in the area of SEN, and, if so, what’s taking so long?

The rise of educational neuroscience

When Should Dyslexics Try Visual Intervention

Visual dyslexia only affects about 10% of dyslexics as the primary cause of their reading problems and so it is seldom the first thought about what intervention is needed. While that is as it should be , I don't think that it should only be considered after spending much time and money on interventions and concluding that the final results fall below what could be reasonably expected from those interventions.

To muddle things up more, there are perhaps another 20% of dyslexics who co-mingle visual and more prevalent language and auditory processing problems. As these dyslexics show the typical early speech and communication problems so common to dyslexia they are likely to be enrolled in whatever the local community has deemed the answer to dyslexia without visual problems ever being considered.

People tend to believe their own senses and assume whatever they experience is normal. This is particularly true in children. Depending on the age of the child, visual problems can sometimes be determined by discussions about their vision. Being extremely near sighted all my life my Ah-ha moment came when I went to school with my first pair of glasses. I found that my teacher was not doing her usual arm waving dance up front while explaining things by the black board but was actually writing on the black board. I had no idea . It occurred to me later that if someone had asked how well I could read the blackboard I would have answered " read what?". I also remember my first eye exam and the first question . What direction is the E pointing? my answer " what E ?". My mother almost screamed THAT E ON THE WALL , "what E? I said.

My point being that , at least for me , as a child I thought my vision was normal . My fuzzy little world where only things closer than my outstretched arm were clear was normal. Later in life I realized that any discussion about my vision would have revealed its flaws.

My criteria for whether the See Right Dyslexia Glasses will help visual dyslexics is: can the visual dyslexic describe specific visual problems that make reading difficult. That works well for adults. Children can often answer questions about how they see the page that indicate problems that to them seems normal. Are all the words clear ,sharp , in focus , stable or in motion, and look uniform?

I am going to add another indication of visual dyslexia for children that parents can check. It is not universal but often can be used as an indication of visual dyslexia. If by changing font size on the computer the child's fluency improves with increasing size then a visual problem may be indicated.

As some visual dyslexics experience problems even with the large print in first grade books it may be impossible to both increase the size and have enough words to read for a fair test for all.
It is a better test for those visual dyslexics that only started to have their problems about third grade when print size in their school books gets smaller. It might also be helpful to stop near a billboard with very large print and ask if the print looks the same as that in their books.

A careful observer can often listen to a child's speech and determine if any language or auditory processing problems are likely to lead to reading problems and need to be addressed. In an ideal world discussions about vision and how a child see the written word would also be included. As visual dyslexia is unlikely to produce any noticeable problems before school age it is important to at least have a discussion about their vision if reading problems occur.

Visual intervention should be tried when there is an indication that visual problems with seeing the printed page are present. As See Right Dyslexia Glasses have a money back guarantee they are a low financial risk and are very effective in removing visual dyslexia associated visual problems.

Dyslexia V's Visual Dyslexia

Dyslexia and visual dyslexia result in the same types of reading difficulties. Slow, inaccurate reading that results in poor comprehension of written material is common to both dyslexia and visual dyslexia.
Dyslexia and visual dyslexia are both information processing problems but have different causes. The different causes require different interventions.

Dyslexia or Visual Dyslexia ?

The problem is how someone can determine if an individual's problem results from dyslexia or visual dyslexia.

The most common research based theory of dyslexia is that it is a brain structure problem that interferes with processing the auditory and phonemic information in a normal manner.

This often shows up in speech and comprehension of speech difficulties prior to exposure to reading.This is the child who mixes up words, has trouble with rhyming and sometimes following directions. The inaccurate processing of speech makes learning to read a battle which leads to poor fluency, accuracy and comprehension. When asked to describe a page of print the response from a dyslexic is a clear, focused, uniform and stable page. This indicates that their problem is not visual.

Visual dyslexia is not an auditory or phonemic processing problem.

The visually dyslexic child does not have the speech problems associated with dyslexia of mixing up words, rhyming or following directions. His or her problems show up when difficulties with the visual aspects of reading are
encountered.

Moving words, missing, transposed or reversed letters and an assortment of other visual problems are what the visually dyslexic child has to battle. When asked how the words on a page look the result is quite different for the visually dyslexic child than the dyslexic child.

I could read if only the words would stop moving or if the words would always look the same are common complaints for the visually dyslexic child.

Visual dyslexics have trouble with reading because they have trouble seeing what is written. With the See Right Dyslexia Glasses all the words on the page will be stable, uniform and in focus. That is why they are called the visual dyslexia solution.
Reading errors caused by visual problems will be eliminated with the See Right Dyslexia Glasses. The visual dyslexic will no longer have to slow down or stop to guess at words. This results in an immediate increase in reading speed, fluency and accuracy.
Spelling will also improve over time as having an accurate visual memory of words makes them easier to remember.

Dyslexia and Visual Dyslexia may co-exist.

When dyslexia and visual dyslexia co-exist it may still be beneficial to have the visual problems removed by the See Right Dyslexia Glasses. If a dyslexic can also describe a visual problem that makes reading difficult that visual problem will still be removed by the glasses. While not a complete solution he or she will no longer have to battle both types of problems when reading.

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