Dyslexia: Causes And Symptoms Of Reading Difficulties
For many people, reading is a hobby, a pleasant hobby that leads us to relax and imagine stories and worlds different from our own or to reflect on different areas of life. It is also a way of learning and acquiring knowledge, capturing and giving their meaning to the written symbols that we perceive through vision, the graphemes.
But reading fluently is not something that is easily achieved A long process of learning and automation is necessary so that reading can become a way of acquiring information. And not in all cases this process occurs in a normative manner.
For some people, reading is a tremendously complicated process, making frequent errors that make it difficult to understand what is written. Many of these cases of people with reading difficulties suffer from a reading learning disorder that in turn can affect academic and work performance: dyslexia
People who suffer from dyslexia or a learning disorder with reading difficulties present a learning pattern with severe difficulties in recognizing words at the written level. In addition, these individuals They usually show poor spelling and spelling skills and it is common for them to also have some difficulties in mathematical reasoning (dyscalculia).
The main problem of subjects with dyslexia occurs in the precision with which they deal with the act of reading, causing poor precision in reading words. This lack of precision causes the frequent mistakes the most common being the presence of omissions of letters and sounds, repetitions and hesitations during reading, translations of the position of letters within a word, insertion of new sounds, substitutions in sounds or words or use of more frequent derivatives of this.
Furthermore, dyslexia rarely appears alone; It produces many other learning problems related especially to reading comprehension. The fact of there is a very low reading speed makes it difficult to understand the material read.
Since it is a problem that occurs early in development, the effects of dyslexia can cause a poor adjustment in the academic and work environment It can also cause serious self-esteem problems that can extend throughout life. Not being able to read correctly often causes people with dyslexia to actively avoid reading, especially if reading becomes aversive due to insistence. that they read correctly.
dyslexia It is a chronic neurodevelopmental disorder, being the most common learning disorder Although the errors made in reading are normal at certain ages, to be diagnosed with this disorder it is necessary that the reading skills are far below what would be expected in an individual of the same maturational level and level of intelligence. It has genetic-based neurological causes and needs to be treated in order to improve the performance and adaptation capacity of those who suffer from it.
Double route theory
The existence of this disorder and the fact that the ability to read is an important part of our daily lives have been explored and investigated from different theories. One of the most accepted is that of Morton’s model, with its theory of the two-way process of reading information processing
The first way that the author refers to is the direct or lexical route through which a global reading is carried out, recognizing the words as a whole without needing to visualize the entire word. In this route, visual stimulation is basically used to obtain information.
The second way proposed by this theory, the phonological way, would work indirectly by needing to relate the visual stimulus with the sounds it represents and subsequently said sounds with their meaning. This second process requires the information to be converted from grapheme to phoneme, so the process is somewhat longer. It is mainly used when we do not know the word to read, it being new to us and we have no previous references to it.
In dyslexia, one or both pathways do not seem to work correctly, causing the typical errors of this disorder. To better understand what happens during this disorder, we first look at the typical developmental process of reading ability.
Typical development of reading ability
As we have said, the ability to read is acquired throughout a long learning process, and in turn affects the rest of development as reading is essential to be able to follow the typical training process of formal education.
In a first phase called logographic, the child will use the basic form of the word to recognize elements that are familiar without taking into account (and even without knowing) the sounds that each letter represents.
Subsequently, Around the age of five, children begin to be aware that letters represent specific sounds and that these mean something, appearing the ability to mentally convert sounds into visual symbols and letters into sounds. This phase is known as alphabetic, and in them children begin to syllable and separate phonemes.
Lastly, approximately around the age of seven or eight the spelling phase would be reached in which the individual would be able to analyze words from their syntax at a level that, with time and practice, will end up being equal to that of an adult.
However, people who suffer from dyslexia have problems in some part of this process for some reason, not being able to fully recognize the shape of the word, transform it into sound, or both.
Types of dyslexia
Dyslexia is a relatively common learning disorder, but the type of errors made can vary greatly depending on the type of reading access route that is damaged. We can find several types of dyslexia and different ways to classify them But since the model of the double access route to reading is one of the most accepted, the most commonly used typologies are the following.
1. Phonological dyslexia
In this type of dyslexia, people have damage to the phonological pathway, being able to access reading only through the visual pathway. In this way, the reader is unable to correctly associate the written word with its spoken equivalent, reading only from the visual form of the word.
This is why in this type of dyslexia Many mistakes are usually made when reading pseudowords (invented words), since they tend to associate words of which they know the form with others. They also frequently make declensions of the word and frequently fail in function words (for example prepositions).
2. Surface dyslexia
In surface dyslexia the reading problem occurs essentially in reading irregular words. The access route to damaged reading would be the lexica, having to focus on the sounds and phonemes of the word in order to read.
In this case, those who suffer from this type of dyslexia They have trouble reading words globally, having difficulties when associating letter and sound. It is common for them to make mistakes in words that sound the same, and a high level of slowness in reading and hesitation is common, making several attempts until they find the correct word.
Deep dyslexia can be understood from considering that both the phonological pathway and part of the lexical pathway do not function correctly. The person reads visually, but since this route is also damaged, the problems are much greater, and they can suffer semantic errors along with others typical of the other two types of dyslexia
Treatment and educational recommendations
Dyslexia is a problem that affects a large number of people, and detecting and managing it correctly can be essential in order to facilitate the normative development of the individual and their adjustment in society.
After the diagnosis, which is carried out through procedures and batteries of standardized and popular assessments such as the TALE or the PROLEC In schools and counseling and psycho-pedagogical care teams, the start of treatment should begin as quickly as possible in order to avoid complications and facilitate development.
The treatment to be carried out will depend on the patient’s abilities, having to adapt the strategy to be applied according to the possibilities of each case At first you will have to identify the most problematic areas, in order to work on them little by little and as you improve, introduce more complicated elements.
Literacy and motivation training
A fundamental part of the treatment is do literacy training, increasing the level of phonological awareness of the subject little by little while at the same time gradually increasing the time dedicated to reading aloud (and possibly from attractive texts adapted for individuals with dyslexia).
It is also very useful use multisensory methods that allow the information coming from the different senses to be related strengthening the ability to link vision and hearing.
It is essential that the treatment contains elements that contribute to motivating the child (or adult, if it has not been diagnosed before) and increasing their confidence, the collaboration of family members and teachers being essential so that reading does not become torture. It is recommended to read to them at home so that they see reading as something enjoyable and positive. Criticism of their performance should be avoided as much as possible since it is common that because of this they end up becoming insecure and avoiding reading.
