Take a moment to read the following. How was that? Frustrating? Slow? What were those sentences about? They're actually a simulation of the experience of dyslexia, designed to make you decode each word. Those with dyslexia experience
that laborious pace every time they read. When most people think of dyslexia, they think of seeing letters
and words backwards, like seeing "b" as "d" and vice versa, or they might think people with dyslexia see "saw" as "was". The truth is people with dyslexia see things the same way as everyone else. Dyslexia is caused by a phonological
processing problem, meaning people affected by it have trouble not with seeing language but with manipulating it. For example, if you heard the word cat and then someone asked
you, "Remove the 'c'," what word would you have left? At. This can be difficult
for those with dyslexia. Given a word in isolation, like fantastic, students with dyslexia
need to break the word into parts to read it: fan, tas, tic. Time spent decoding makes it hard to keep up with peers and gain sufficient comprehension. Spelling words phonetically, like s-t-i-k for stick and f-r-e-n-s for friends is also common. These difficulties are more
widespread and varied than commonly imagined. Dyslexia affects up to one in five people. It occurs on a continuum. One person might have mild dyslexia while the next person has
a profound case of it. Dyslexia also runs in families. It's common to see one family member who has trouble spelling while another family member has severe difficulty decoding
even one syllable words, like catch. The continuum and distribution of dyslexia suggests a broader
principle to bear in mind as we look at how the brains
of those with dyslexia process language. Neurodiversity is the idea that because all our brains
show differences in structure and function, we shouldn't be so quick to label every deviation from "the norm" as a pathological disorder or dismiss people living
with these variations as "defective." People with neurobiological
variations like dyslexia, including such creative
and inventive individuals as Picasso, Muhammad Ali, Whoopi Goldberg, Steven Spielberg, and Cher, clearly have every capacity to be brilliant and successful in life. So, here's the special way the brains of those with dyslexia work. The brain is divided into two hemispheres. The left hemisphere is generally
in charge of language and, ultimately, reading, while the right typically
handles spatial activities. fMRI studies have found that the brains of those with dyslexia rely more on the right
hemisphere and frontal lobe than the brains of those without it. This means, when they read a word, it takes a longer trip through their brain and can get delayed in the frontal lobe. Because of this neurobiological glitch, they read with more difficulty. But those with dyslexia can physically change their brain and improve their reading with an intensive,
multi-sensory intervention that breaks the language down and teaches the reader to decode based on syllable types
and spelling rules. The brains of those with dyslexia begin using the left hemisphere more efficiently while reading, and their reading improves. The intervention works because it locates dyslexia appropriately as a functional variation in the brain, which, naturally, shows
all sorts of variations from one person to another. Neurodiversity emphasizes this spectrum of brain function in all humans and suggests that to better
understand the perspectives of those around us, we should try not only to see
the world through their eyes but understand it through their brains.
Interesting.
I'm always looking for new and better ways to explain dyslexia too other people. People have always ask if I see everything differently like jumbled or if I see it backwards but I just processed slower and different... And sometimes even better.
This was well synthesized!
This is actually amazing, I was diagnosed probably 18-20 years ago. And even til this day it hasn’t made sense until now, the symptoms people would tell me I had weren’t the case at all, just like this video explains. Thanks for sharing this