What are the symptoms of dyslexia? How can it be detected?

Since dyslexia is thought to be hereditary, it is important to enquire if a family history exists—especially from the father's side.

Dyslexics tend to transpose letters, so that the word "saw" may be interpreted as "was" or "on" as "no" or "dog" as "god". Mirror writing is also seen ("b" instead of "d").

The dyslexic child frequently has a poor visual memory for languages. To understand what visual memory means, let us examine how words are interpreted by the brain. When reading is done, the eye skims over words. If a word is short, it checks its memory for a similar word and interprets it accordingly. If a word is long it breaks it up and stores parts of it in memory, which it then retrieves to form the full word like "parliamentarian".

The dyslexic child has a poor word memory, so though he may know that cat means a furry animal, the word, if it is flashed at him printed on cards will have no meaning for him immediately.

Again, the dyslexic reads almost six times slower than an average child of his age and learning. Thus, a simple test is to make him read a paragraph, which he will read, hesitatingly stumbling over longer words though that paragraph may have been read repeatedly before.

Dyslexic children also make spelling errors, but the errors are bizarre and are often even unrelated to the sound of a dictated letter, like Schackspeare (Shakespeare) or Brackfast (breakfast), Tamps (Thames). These persist even in adult life when a fairly useful degree of reading is attained.

The usual complaint is that "the child is intelligent but is doing poorly or he knows everything but he just will not do his homework in his book".

The usual transition between oral and reading instruction is at the level of Standard II and III and it is at this level that a careful evaluation for dyslexic children has to be maintained.

Transposition of words constitutes an important type of error, especially when applied to words in sequences. The dyslexic may see "did he" instead of "he did".

Besides disability in writing, there is inability to form geometric parts into a whole. This is frequently seen in primary dyslexia. A tendency to invert figures, drawing them upside down, mixing up the sides, right and left, or even compress all the drawings into half a figure, is common.

Finally there is the ancillary hyperactivity with a very poor attention span. Usually the reading span is 10 to 15 minutes. The result in a classroom is usually an exhibition of overwhelming futility of effort in instruction by an exasperated teacher.

What is the treatment for dyslexia?

Virtually the only way of treating dyslexia is a highly individualised and personalised special training for the child. The technique of training is termed as "cross modality transfer". This method is an enhanced teaching technique using auditory with visual association in relation to a daily repetitive drill by a teacher especially trained in remedial reading techniques.

If the child is hyperactive, drugs may have to be used to slow down the excess activity, and increase the attention span.

The results are however well worth the effort. The same child, who a few months ago, was poor in studies, refused to pay attention, was hyperactive in class and mischievous, is now converted into a happy, well-balanced child.

Children recover to a fair extent in a good proportion of cases if, and only provided, they are diagnosed early enough and the appropriate treatment instituted.

Dustin Flores

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