The Dyslexic Brain
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2012-02-15/dyslexic-brain
For kids with dyslexia, learning to read can be tough going. The disorder afflicts an estimated 15% of Americans. Dyslexics typically have trouble associating letters with sounds and words. Many learn to work around the challenge, but there’s an intriguing new twist: some who work with dyslexics believe that the disability may also confer certain advantages. Specifically, anecdotal evidence suggests that dyslexics have sharper peripheral and three dimensional vision. Please join us to talk about the special challenges and possible advantages for people with dyslexia.
Guests
Dr. Brock Eide
clinician and co-author with Dr. Fernette Eide of "The Dyslexic Advantage: Unlocking the Hidden Potential of the Dyslexic Brain"
Laura Kaloi
National Center for Learning Disabilities
Jeffrey Gilger
professor, School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts
University of California, Merced
Guinevere Eden
director, Center for the Study of Learning
professor, Department of Pediatrics
Georgetown University Medical Center
Program Highlights
People with dyslexia often have trouble reading, spelling and other academic skills, challenges that can be clear disadvantages. But Doctors Brock and Fernette Eide argue dyslexics often have particular abilities as well. Their new book on the subject is titled "The Dyslexic Advantage."
What Is Dyslexia?
Dyslexia is a language-based learning disability that affects an individual's ability to read, write, and spell, as well as other activities that require our brain to process information. It affects nearly 2 million school age children in public schools in the U.S. It's estimated that up to 15 million people, including adults, are dyslexic. There are sometimes some very early warning signs that a child may be developing dyslexia, like when a toddler isn't gaining early speaking skills at the appropriate rate, Kaloi said. Intensive early intervention could help a child gain the speaking skills they need.
Is Dyslexia Heritable?
There are micro differences in the brains of dyslexic people, Eden said, and it is now known it is a heritable disorder. This doesn't mean that the environment isn't also important, Gilger said. But in families where any one individual has dyslexia, the odds that it will appear again in that family go up anywhere from four to ten times over the base rate, Gilger said. Researchers are beginning to be able to identify some of the genes that might be involved.
Advantages To The Dyslexic Brain
Eide and colleagues found four basic advantages that dyslexic people have in common, and they use the acronym "MIND" to represent them. "M" is for material, or spatial, reasoning; "I" is for interconnected reasoning, which allows the ability to see connections between objects and concepts and to fit these into a big picture; "N" stands for "narrative reasoning," the tendency to understand factual information as cases or examples rather than in the abstract; and "D" stands for "dynamic reasoning," or the ability to use remembered information to make predictions about processes that change over time. Kaloi believes that teachers need more resources to help them harness some of these strengths in dyslexic students. The dropout rate among dyslexics, she said, is currently about 20 percent.
A Caller's Perspective: "It's Not That You Can't Learn. You Just Learn Differently"
A caller named Ben talked about his own experiences as a dyslexic and said that people often think of dyslexia as a problem where people "reverse their letters." "It's not just about reversing letters. It's really about the acquisition of reading, which is something we created," he said. Kaloi responded by emphasizing again that teachers need to develop a better understanding of how dyslexic students learn. "You don't do what we call 'drill and kill' with kids with dyslexia," she said, "where they just get the worksheets and the same stuff over and over....we have to have a different approach for these students and how they learn," she said.
You can read the full transcript here.
Comments
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YOU ARE SO RIGHT about Dyslexic people having very good spatial skills, at least for me. I am Dyslexic, but I have very strong spatial skills. I exactly match, in a freaky your-reading-my-mind way, your “MIND” model. My learning and thinking processes are very different than most people. I used to describe myself as an “unconventional thinker”. I only recently learned that it was Dyslexia. Dyslexia runs in my family.
Many people don’t ”get” me. I can appear “slow” because I can’t remember the specific name for something. But, I may have a strong understanding of it, sometimes leading to great insight that most people don’t see.
I’m 54 and I’ve been struggling with absorbing information all my life. But, I eventually learned that once I form a mental spatial model of a subject, learning more about that subject becomes much easier because new information often has a pre-built place for it.
Think of this as the difference between storing all your personal belongings in a storage room verses in a house. A storage room is like my brain before forming a mental model on a subject All my "stuff" is just piled in there, and hard to retrieve. A house is like my brain after forming a mental model. There is a natural location for most things. It is much easier to find things, and new things often have an obvious storage location.
(continuation from above)
I didn’t do very well in High School. I didn't think I was smart because I was slow in recalling information. I could never answer a question faster than one of my classmates. I nearly flunked senior year math. I struggled absorbing new information.
I enlisted in the Navy, where I became passionate about designing electronic devices. I headed into college to get an Electrical Engineering degree with "do or die" motivation. I worked very hard, and consequently discovered my ability to form strong mental spatial models, which led me to master subjects. I became confident in myself which motivated me to never stop struggling with new subjects.
I did very well in Electrical Engineering school with a near straight-A GPA of 3.97. I often struggled early in a semester while absorbing new material, but did very well late in the semester after I formed a mental model of the material.
(continuation from above)
When I form a strong mental spatial model of a subject, I can, to paraphrase Einstein, perform "thought experiments". To me, it feels like flying in an airplane. An automobile engine is a good example. I push over on the stick in my mental airplane to fly down into the combustion chamber. I see fuel and oxygen flowing into the chamber and mixing. Then, I see a piston moving up to compress this mixture. Then, I see a spark that explodes the mixture. I can feel the increased heat and pressure of the explosion. I can see stronger stress lines in the piston from the greatly increased pressure on its top surface. I can fly back and watch the transmission operate, etc.
I can even fly through more abstract subjects like electronic circuitry and electromagnetic radiation (light and radio waves). Being able to visualize and manipulate (run “thought experiments”) on electronic circuits improves my ability to correctly apply math to it. I can mentally change the input values to my mental model to see how the output changes. Then, I change the math model inputs in the same way. Then I check to see if both outputs change in the same way.
(continuation from above)
Advice to Dyslexic People:
See yourself as having highly specialized skills, that are highly valued, if not essential, in certain subjects.
Carefully pick your career. Pick a career where developing a mental spatial model gives a strong advantage. Engineering is a good example. Being able to visualize a system and mentally manipulate it to perform "thought experiments" is a significant advantage.
Pick a career where the base knowledge doesn't change much over time. Medicine may be a good example. You won't have to relearn your base knowledge later in your career. The human body doesn’t change.
Once you've picked a good matching career, learn it well so it becomes a spatial model for you. Don't rush through your education. Learn each subject well to build a foundation for learning the next subject. When I went back to college after 6 years in the Navy, I took a 5-hour math review course that basically covered all pre-calculus high school math. Though this course didn't count toward my degree, it was key in getting all A's in the following Calculus classes.
It was so touching to hear some one explain what bedeviled me 67 years ago as a dyslexic cchild in a class room witha teacher who would usea ruler on the back of my hands if I was in the process of making a mistake. I wish some had known that it was not my fault. I had this teach for 4 years until I moved to 7th grade. I was labeled bright and gifted so she saw me as bad not trying.
The other student would teach me whatI need to know as we walked to school in the morning .I memorized any thing I needed to know.
finally I figured out that she was the one who was blind. It was the day she came at me out of control. I saw her as a 2 year old in a tantrum.
I was bigger than she in side. and she could not touch me.
The blessing of that time was I could talk to childern who are in trouble.
I could see what was working and know we all do not have to be good at every thing. I do not think the teach nor I should have had to endure the pian those years presented. Bravo for the researchers who can explain this strange querk.
And yes there are things I can do easily that most around me can not do.
Today I just try to be perfectly human and own my creative spelling , disorginize deck and do what I do best solve problems of a human nature. Thank you for every thing you do to inform me and warm me.
From the left coast.
I'm dyslexic. In fact, working with and around my dyslexia is a big part of my life.
For me, Kaloi is exactly right in saying that "drill and kill" and "throw it at the kids and have it stick" doesn't work. I do not learn "on the fly". At work, I work hard at the beginning of a new assignment to understand as much as I can about a subject, so that in casual conversations and meetings I can clearly understand the conversation.
Again for me, Kaloi is exactly right in saying "provide what's called Systematic Instruction. It needs to be very intensive ... consistent ... done in a very direct way". To develop a mental spatial model of a subject, I need a complete description of the subject with clearly defined relationships.
A paradox of my learning style is that often being given more information on a subject is better than being "spoon fed" just "what I need to know". I can't form a mental spatial model from just a slice of a subject.
But this additional subject information needs to be clearly defined and accurate, with clear and accurate relationships between different parts. The terminology needs to be clearly defined and used consistently throughout the explanation. Many times in subject explanations, written and verbal, multiple terms are used to mean the same thing, or one term is used to mean different things by different people, by different groups of people (like Engineering department verses Marketing department), and in different areas of a subject. This cripples my learning process until I form a clear definition of each term, and how each term is used by different people and in different contexts.
I just found out that my youngest daughter is dyslexic. My husband is dyslexic and she has always had trouble with reading, so the diagnosis wasn't a surprise. Knowing what I know now, I would have had her tested in first grade to catch it early. She really struggles with any school work that is reading intensive and excels at Music and Art.
My new dyslexia resource is Sensa Learn. They are incredible people and really care about the kids in their program. We are bringing our daughter back for a second set of testing for other disabilities as well.
If you have a dyslexic child (or you are an adult with dyslexia) do yourself a favor and check out their website at www.sensalearn.org
In addition, academic coaching can assist students with other skills such as organization, study and testing skills. A good academic coaching site is www.studentsuccess101.me