Last Updated on October 1, 2022 by Editorial Team
MEDICALLY REVIEWED BY NUMBERDYSLEXIA’S MEDICAL REVIEW PANEL ON MAY 29, 2020
What is Dyslexia?
Dyslexia is a specific learning disability in reading. Kids with dyslexia have trouble connecting the letters they see to the sounds those letters make. Dyslexia affects the part of the brain that deals with processing language and graphic symbols.
Other than reading, Kids with dyslexia will have trouble writing and spelling words as well. Parents can find a lot of mistakes in the kid’s notebook. Kids might get frustrated, angry, or sad because reading and spelling are so hard. There is a high chance that Dyslexia may occur with other disabilities such as dyscalculia and ADHD.
However, the problem in dyslexia is a linguistic one, not a visual one. People with dyslexia have normal intelligence and usually have normal vision. Dyslexia in no way stems from any lack of intelligence. Kids with this issue are just as smart as their peers.
According to the British Dyslexia Association, About 5% to 10% of Americans have some symptoms of dyslexia, such as slow reading, trouble spelling, or mixing up words. In the UK, It’s estimated that up to 1 in every 10 people have some degree of dyslexia.
There is no cure for dyslexia but early assessment can help your child to adopt a new learning process and avoid other co-occurring issues. Most kids with dyslexia can learn to read with the right kind of teaching. Help the child to slowly absorb new ways that make reading easier.
Now let’s talk about the common types of dyslexia that can affect a person’s reading ability.
Broadly there are 5 types of dyslexia.
- Phonological Dyslexia : This type of dyslexia is characterized by a difficulty in breaking down individual sounds of language (also known as Phonemic Awareness) and blending those sounds to make the word. It’s also sometimes referred to as dysphonetic dyslexia. Kids struggle to decode and manipulate words in mind.
- Surface Dyslexia : Children with surface dyslexia have a hard time reading those words which do not follow general rules of pronunciation. These words usually spelled differently from how they’re pronounced. Kids with surface dyslexia take longer to be able to recognize common words by sight. Mostly words with one alphabet such as “chalk”, “knight”, “yacht” and etc come under this category.
- Speed/Naming Deficit Dyslexia : In this type of dyslexia, kids struggles to read letters and numbers rapidly. They can say the names, but it takes them longer to name many of them in a row. The main reason behind this is the inability of brain to process information rapidly.
- Deep Dyslexia: Deep dyslexia involves the occurrence of semantic errors (e.g. reading Street as “road”). It generally affects the reading abilities in later period of life. Visual errors such as reading ‘nose’ for ‘hose or derivational errors reading ‘work’ as ‘working’ can be seen in this type of dyslexia. It occurs mainly due to head trauma or stroke that affects the left side of the brain.
- Visual Dyslexia: In visual dyslexia, kids struggle to form image of the alphabet’s structure in their minds. They have unusual visual experience when looking at words. Information tracking capability of the brain is pretty weak.
An engineer, Maths expert, Online Tutor and animal rights activist. In more than 5+ years of my online teaching experience, I closely worked with many students struggling with dyscalculia and dyslexia. With the years passing, I learned that not much effort being put into the awareness of this learning disorder. Students with dyscalculia often misunderstood for having just a simple math fear. This is still an underresearched and understudied subject. I am also the founder of Smartynote -‘The notepad app for dyslexia’,