AUDITORY |
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In order to learn to read words the child has to sound it out using the
speech sounds (or phonemic structure) of the language that it knows from
speaking. But many Dyslexics have slight problems in hearing some rapidly
changing speech sounds, especially the ones that fade in less than 40
milliseconds. So they develop a distorted word recognition pattern, unable
to match some sounds to the syllable on the page. |
AUTOMATICITY |
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Automaticity applies to any skill that is practiced sufficiently, cognitive, linguistic or motor, from riding a bike and driving a car to coming up with well-worn phases that help social interaction go smoothly. Automatisation allows quick cognitively unprocessed reactions to events as well as leaving the individual free to concentrate on the variation — the creative aspects of a task. It allows humans to focus on the interpretation of a violin sonata rather than the bowing of a violin. Much research suggests that the seat of automaticity is a sub-cortical structure — the cerebellum. It is associated with new learning and automatic sequential movement. Fawcett and Nicholson "Dyslexia in Children", 1994, Wheatsheaf Press have built on Harold Levinson’s early work on the links between cerebellular dysfunction and poor balance /nystagmus/speed of processing/ time estimation to trace a link from cerebellular impairment to reading, spelling and writing. They rename Dyslexia as a basic skills acquisition deficit or an automatisation deficit. This would include Dyspraxia, Dysgraphia and Dyscalculia, so all can be subsumed under this conceptualization. Being unable to discriminate fast auditory and visual information creates a lack of phonological automaticity that affects reading, spelling, writing and listening. The affected person, the dyslexic, will read by trying to remember words as pictures, i.e. overemphasize the visual route in reading. However, this makes reading liable to error and slow. An efficient reader uses a simultaneous phonological analysis (breaking words down into their sounds) with the visual, whole word analysis. A reader, who has a phonological automaticity in the 44 phonemes that make up the English language, can decode any word, even unknown ones. But human memory cannot store the thousands of words that make up the English language and therefore new words cannot be easily added to the reading repertoire if a reader is using the visual approach alone. This is of course a necessary coping strategy but cannot take the place of automaticity in literacy. However coping strategies are always at a cost in terms of fatigue and the effort necessary to maintain them. When automaticity in literacy has not been achieved the individual must use conscious attention, which is not always easily available and is degraded by other stresses, such as illness, fatigue and other demands on attention, anxiety or time pressures. Skills that can be achieved one day may not the next, according to other stresses and demands on attention. Automaticity transfers the mediation of literacy skills from the cortex to sub-cortical structures that do not take up conscious attention. Thus the compensating Dyslexic student or worker shows a puzzling variability and must work harder than the student who has been able to develop such automaticity. The Dyslexic child arrives home from school exhausted and is then faced with another mammoth task, which takes them many times longer than their classmates, homework. Reading is not naturally automatic but must be learned. The reader must develop a conscious awareness that the letters on the page represent the sounds of the spoken word. The reader must parse or segment words into their underlying phonological elements. Once the word is in its phonological form it can be identified and understood, even if the reader has never come across it before. This is then automatic. In Dyslexia, an inefficient phonological matching produces a distorted representation of the sound and often the reader can’t recognize it as a word they know and speak. Reading is avoided and over the years the lower level of exposure to text means the Dyslexic is unlikely to ever develop automaticity in reading. |
EMPATHISE |
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A definition to follow soon. |
HYPERVIGILANT |
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A definition to follow soon. |
POLYSYLLABIC |
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A definition to follow soon. |
SENSES |
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The senses help us make sense of the world. We hear, see, smell, taste and touch but the major information processing senses are auditory and visual. In specific learning difficulties it is the fast processing elements of the visual and auditory pathways that carry information to the brain that are mistimed. Thus the individual is a SLOW hearer, or "see-er". The problem is NOT one of acuity, for which spectacles and hearing aids are prescribed, It is simply the inability to process print normally when eyes are moving across a page and also the inability to perceive some speech sounds that are fast - B', P's, D's, T's for example. That being the case it is hard to match the sound to the corresponding letter on the page. But sound therapy and tinted lenses can help straighten out this mistiming of the fast and slow. |
VISUAL |
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A child learning to read needs to be able to segment tiny details of written words into the syllables that sound-out the word, and sometimes they can do this for individual words. But when it comes to moving eyes across a line of text, letters can get out of sequence so the word can't be sounded out, or the print even seems to move and blurr, so that keeping it in focus strains the eyes. There is no spare attention left to monitor meaning as well. This is because the visual system cannot track the rapid changes necessary. Research on post-mortem dyslexic brains show that the cells of the visual system that monitor fast changes, are deficient. (The magnocellular system) Coloured overlays and lenses have been shown to stimulate this magnocellular system, and some types of eye exercises. |
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Refs; |
MOTOR |
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After we perceive what our senses are telling us, we have a motor system to do something about this information — run away, attack or approach. So senses in, motor out, and we have a sensory-motor cortex in the brain devoted to this equation.In specific learning difficulties like Dyspraxia and Dysgraphia this is not as coordinated as it should be. The gap gives enough time to miss a ball or get thoughts out of synchrony with the words to be written. |
INATTENTION |
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A definition to follow soon. |
IMPULSIVITY |
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A definition to follow soon. |
HYPERACTIVITY |
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A definition to follow soon. |