A Dyslexia Story

Once upon a time in Education Land there was a wise king named Success. He wanted above all else to have his subjects succeed in life and be happy. After much thought about how to gain this goal, he came upon the idea that having a good educational system for his subjects would be a good place to start. Gathering all of his advisers together a plan was developed to build the best educational system possible. The future looked bright for Education Land.

Word went out to find the best teachers , the best builders and the best book makers and soon the books were printed and the schools were built and teachers made their lesson plans. All of the kingdom's children were required to attend because the king wanted all to succeed.

Time passed by and it was many years before the King went to inspect the schools and see how well his plan was working. At first he was very pleased because the teachers brought out the best students to show him what they had learned. He soon noticed that some students were not included in the demonstrations and asked the teachers why.

The teachers explained that some students kept falling behind because they wouldn't learn to read. Those students are slow or lazy and have refused to put out the effort to learn to read the teachers said. With their poor reading skills they can't learn their other subjects. It is not our fault if they won't learn.

The king wanted to believe the teachers. He had never heard of children who had trouble learning to read but he also wanted all the children to succeed so he took all those children back to the castle to talk to them.

After talking to the children he found that they didn't seem to be slow or lazy and they were really trying hard to learn to read. The King didn't know what to do so he called in all his advisers and asked for suggestions.

Maybe all children can't learn to read the same way said one. Maybe if we ask them what makes reading difficult for them they can tell us said another. Maybe if we can determine how they are different from the children that read well that might help said still another. All good suggestions said the King . I want you to start an investigation immediately.

The advisers called the condition dyslexia . The investigation is still going on.

What Is Dyslexia ???

As simple as the question appears, a totally correct answer is not yet available. Dyslexia can best be considered as a syndrome that exhibits several different problems that make reading much more difficult for an individual. In a syndrome, each individual may or may not have any particular problem from a list of minor problems but must have the major defining problem of the syndrome. The major problem that defines dyslexia is difficulty acquiring the skills to read in a normal manner.

While dyslexia has not yet achieved an accepted medical status of being a syndrome it still is the best way to understand what dyslexia is. Conditions that are considered syndromes have a fixed list of minor problems and usually require that a particular minimum # have to be present along with the major problem to be diagnosed with the syndrome.

The reason dyslexia is not yet considered a syndrome is that there has been no agreement on what particular minor problems need to be included in the list or how many need to be present to define the syndrome. Most people reading this have seen the lists of problems associated with dyslexia and noticed that no two lists of problems are the same. Only time will tell what the final medically accepted list of minor problems will be or how many of those need to be present before a diagnosis meets the standard.

Each individual minor problem also needs to be defined and measurable before dyslexia will finally be considered as a syndrome. Minor problems like delayed speech and poor short term memory ( as examples ) are possible useful ideas associated with some dyslexics but what what does that mean. How delayed is delayed and to what degree are questions that will need to be answered or what standard will measure short term memory problems.

Media reports of researchers that study dyslexia factors typicaly report that they have found the cause of dyslexia at the expense of ignoring all previous studies. This causes much confusion among anyone looking to understand "What is dyslexia?" because the answers seem to keep changing.

Reading dyslexia studies rather than media reports of dyslexia studies builds a different better picture of what is known about dyslexia. Considering that the value of each individual study is that they actually investigate specific minor problems of the dyslexia syndrome makes understanding the results easier. What dyslexia research is doing is building the minor problem list by the determination of whether the aspect studied is actually associated with dyslexia.

I am not comfortable with the conclusion that is widely reported that only high IQ people may be dyslexic. That statement only becomes true if diagnosed is added. Diagnosed dyslexics generally have average or above average IQs . It is likely that some disadvantaged poor children with more limited language exposure and lower IQs may very well be dyslexic also and would benefit from dyslexia intervention also. Basically, without even a suggested mechanism for dyslexia only occurring in high IQ individuals I don't think it can be very productive to eliminate lower IQ individuals from consideration for dyslexia.

Here are some factors that can cause reading problems for dyslexics. (Using a generalized approach as each can be broken down to smaller specifics.)

1) phonological problems- difficulty hearing the difference in the sounds that make up words.
2) language processing problems- difficulty processing sounds as language.
3) visual processing problems- difficulty seeing the page in a clear, focused and stable manner.
4) mental processing problems indirectly related to the above such as short term memory and executive decision making problems and others.

Back to the question, dyslexia is a syndrome that, for an individual, can have different amounts of reading dysfunction caused by a combination of the above problems. The severity and impact of each problem will vary from individual to individual.Some individuals have as their cause 1 predominate problem and little effect from others.

New dyslexia research that is promising for understanding dyslexia is that many dyslexia problems may be initially caused by a generalized problem with filtering out extraneous information or noise. Noise is usually considered as sound but visual noise is a valid concept as well. Looked at another way it may be better to replace the idea of poor filtration of noise with higher sensitivity to noise.

The observation of dyslexics having more difficulty hearing what is being said across a noisy crowded room than non dyslexics was the basis for the development of experiments to determine if poor noise filtration may be an aspect of dyslexia. The results indicate that very well be the case. It doesn't take a great leap to speculate that a higher sensitivity to sound noise may be causing language development problems leading to dyslexia from a young age. Hard to quantify but certainly possible is that modern life is more sound polluted than the past. Some have proposed that some dyslexic students may benefit from using headphones to hear their teachers voice broadcasted to eliminate classroom noise and having a quiet place to study.

Other experiments have investigated dyslexics and non-dyslexics and their ability to perform visual tasks with increasing visual noise by using electronic snow on computer screens. Many dyslexics show a higher sensitivity to the visual snow than the non-dyslexics.

While sound noise is generally external, I believe visual noise is caused by autofluorescent proteins in the eye that can change a photon of visual information into a photon of visual noise by changing the original path. By filtering out the different wavelengths associated with the autofluorescent proteins the visual noise is extinguished. Because the locations of the protein are fixed in individual eyes the individual visual dyslexic usually has a constant specific visual problem that can be described and eliminated.

I sell See Right Dyslexia Glasses that remove described visual problems for dyslexics. Only a minority of dyslexics have visual processing problems that are predominate. The dyslexics that can describe a visual problem that makes reading difficult can have that problem removed by these dyslexia glasses. They have a money back guarantee and require no personal evaluation. More information about these glasses is available at www.dyslexiaglasses.com .

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

Dyslexia and High Intelligence a Common Belief

I have posted on a couple of sites lately that there is no scientific data that indicates that dyslexics have normal to above average intelligence . Diagnosed dyslexics do have average or above average intelligence not because dyslexics have average or above average intelligence in general but because lower intelligent dyslexics are harder to identify and so never enter the group of diagnosed dyslexics that is used for all comparisons to non dyslexics.

While below average dyslexics may be harder to identify that does not mean they could not be helped by proper intervention. The result of this false belief is that dyslexics that could be helped are never identified.

After searching the Internet , I have found why this is such a common belief.

Everybody says so -

A review of many pages of dyslexia web sites indicates that almost all say dyslexics have normal or above normal intelligence. ( This seems to be enough for some people but I usually require at least anecdotal evidence )

By Definition -

Dyslexia is considered a learning disability in the Federal Register under Public Law 94-142. As with other learning disabilities covered under this law, dyslexia involves what is called an exclusionary diagnosis. That is, instead of describing characteristics directly, the definition describes all the conditions that must be ruled out (e.g., low IQ, physical handicaps, environmental factors, etc.) before making a diagnosis. ( This carries more weight than everybody says so. This is a case of I say so and I make the rules. The agenda here seems to be to limit who will be able to get added money from school resources.)

There are other definitions for dyslexia and learning disabilities. I tend to think this next source's agenda is more directly related to scientific reality.

The term "learning disability" was apparently first used and defined by Kirk (1962, cited in Streissguth, Bookstein, Sampson, & Barr, 1993, p.144). The term referred to a discrepancy between a child’s apparent capacity to learn and his or her level of achievement. A review of the LD classifications for 49 of 50 states revealed that 28 of the states included IQ/Achievement discrepancy criteria in their LD guidelines (Ibid., citing Frankenberger & Harper, 1987). However, the National Joint Committee for Learning Disabilities (NJCLD) (1981; 1985) preferred a slightly different definition: "Learning Disability" is a generic term that refers to a heterogeneous group of disorders manifested by significant difficulties in the acquisition and use of listening, speaking, reading, writing, reasoning or mathematical abilities. These disorders are intrinsic to the individual and presumed to be due to Central Nervous System Dysfunction. Even though a learning disability may occur concomitantly with other handicapping conditions (e.g. sensory impairment, mental retardation, social and emotional disturbance) or environmental influences (e.g. cultural differences, insufficient/inappropriate instruction, psychogenic factors) it is not the direct result of those conditions or influences.

Another reason for believing dyslexics are above average is not that they are but only that they are easier to detect.

Current National Institutes of Health (NIH) studies estimate the prevalence of this disorder (dyslexia) at 20% of school age children. This means that one in five children have the fears and emotions expressed above. It is by far the most common form of learning disability. In addition, dyslexia affects all socio-economic classes and all races equally (2) (2). It affects as many boys as girls (3). However, boys are usually spotted more quickly because they tend to exhibit externalizing behaviors such as acting out when doing poorly in school. Consequently the teacher is more likely to look for a problem in a child who is acting out in class rather than one who is quiet. Thus, boys who tend to act out more will be noticed more by the teacher.
As described above, children with the disorder often feel stupid as a result of their constant struggle in school. However, there is no correlation between intelligence and dyslexia. Furthermore it is important to note that phonological abilities do not depend on IQ - the genetic risk can affect learning to read in children of high and of low IQ equally though the problem is easier to detect in those of higher ability who do not show other learning problems. This does not mean however, that it will be easy to differentiate at school entry
between children with dyslexia and children at risk of failure because they come to school from socio-economically or linguistically disadvantaged backgrounds.

Has anyone actually looked to see if low IQ children would benefit from reading intervention compared to higher IQ children?


There's now evidence from research at York University that shows - contrary to what you might have expected - that children with a low IQ can be helped just as much with reading problems as children with a high IQ, providing it's the right reading programme and providing it's implemented in the right way. What you might have expected is that children with a low IQ wouldn't progress as quickly as children with a high IQ: but what these studies in York have found, he says, is that they do.

This isn't a complete review of the subject and I should add that some researchers have looked at dyslexics V's non dyslexics and indeed concluded that dyslexics are of average or above average intelligence. The flaw I see is in those comparisons is that the group of dyslexics does not actually represent all dyslexics but rather diagnosed dyslexics. As the NIH says, the higher intelligent dyslexics are easier to identify and therefore I believe they are over represented in the groups of dyslexics that are compared. If you consider the fact that there also does not seem to be any real difference between the prevalence of dyslexia in boys and girls but more boys are identified as having dyslexia because they seem to act out their frustration more often, then the resulting ,everybody says so , that dyslexia occurs more often in boys than girls starts to be explained in a similar manner.

My little niche in the field of dyslexia involves visual dyslexia. I would like to give one anecdotal example of a undiagnosed visual dyslexic who was considered mildly mentally retarded. It is about the saddest waste of potential I have ever experienced.

Briefly, I accidentally discovered filters that seemed to remove visual problems for a dyslexic back in 1992. After reading all the literature and seeing how badly everyone thought about tinted lenses as a solution I really didn't want to get involved.

My girlfriend's son seemed to meet the description of reading below his intelligence level for being dyslexic as he was a 20 years old special ed student and had never written or read a word in his life except his name and still did not know his alphabet. He was classified as being mildly retarded, had cerebral palsy affecting his left side and had some hearing loss.

Being bored one day, I thought to see if the filters that later became the See Right Dyslexia Glasses might help Chris. It wasn't readily apparent how to go about that but eventually I tried writing out the alphabet once in order and below that I scrambled the letters. I asked him to match A-A and B-B etc. He could only match 13 of the letters. That did seem to help explain why he never learned his alphabet or to read.

After putting on the See Right Dyslexia Glasses he could match all 26 letters and in 3 days he could read the alphabet from flash cards. He wrote his first note to his mother after a week. Since then I have been looking for the research that has been done to conclude that dyslexics are only from the group of average to above average intelligence and I still do not believe it has ever been done.

My experience with how Chris responded to the dyslexia glasses motivated me to investigate several subjects. The first was to identify who the See Right Dyslexia Glasses might help and why. The second was to identify why dyslexics were thought to be from the group of people who have average to above average intelligence.

15 years later I have the answers to both questions. The See Right Dyslexia Glasses remove any described visual problem that makes reading difficult for visual dyslexics and so benefit any dyslexic that can describe a visual problem that makes it difficult to read. The myth of why dyslexics are considered to have average or above intelligence is the result of several factors described in this post but does not seem to have any valid support and is a self fulfilling prophecy.