Learn basic facts about dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia and ADHD - Video

Learn basic facts about dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia and ADHD and visit LD.org for resources on how to get the most out of your relationship with your child's doctor.

Credit for video goes to the National Center for Learning Disabilities

Olive Hickmott: Empowering Learning New Year message

Let me first wish you, my valued reader, a very prosperous and highly successful New Year in 2013.

I am sure you have spent some time in the last week reflecting on your life and family in 2012 and are planning a whole set of new adventures for 2013.

This week I received a message from my original guide and mentor, Olive Hickmott, from Empowering Learning, which may me reflect on how we got started on this path.

I would like to share this message with you and to let you know that Olive has Dyslexia herself but with great fortitude and determination, pursued a very successful career in engineering, before her retirement.

She is herself an example of a talented person with dyslexia developing into a self-determining, success story but not content with her own success she has spent the last 7 years coaching and mentoring dyslexic children.

Her aim; to help children break through their barriers to education and overcome their low self esteem; use the talents they have to learn in their own way, one that makes perfect sense to them; set them on a life-changing path of self discovery and development.

I invite you to read Olive's message. It says a lot of the progress being made in overcoming Dyslexia and other cognitive processing disorders and, I hope it will give you some more cause for optimism in 2013. It may even spark some new ideas and paths for you to follow.

"It is a very different world than when I (Olive) started work back in 2005 on literacy challenges. 

People are much more open to seeing different perspectives, identifying the exceptional talents of learning differently and overcoming the challenges. 

In 2013 we want all our exceptionally talented children and adults, who learn in a different way, to think about how they are being taught, to excel in their chosen areas, that are often very creative.

As our contribution to this, we are looking:

• to reach as many children and adult across the world as possible, so they can learn how to simply improve their literacy, numeracy, concentration and so much more, even when they have a diagnosis of Dyslexia, Dyscalculia, Dysgraphia, ADHD, Asperger's or Autism. - These new skills will further develop their exceptional (mainly visual) skills and eradicate many of the negative symptoms associated with these challenges.
• to assist families and Practitioners to be as successful as they can be in their communities.

To achieve this we are building a larger and stronger international community of people with the skills to teach people who learn differently. 

The level 1 Practitioner programme is now available as a single day in Hertfordshire, UK, as a set of live weekly tele-seminars and as a home study programme that you can access whenever is convenient for you, plus on-line coaching to answer any questions. 

Recently, we have trained Practitioners and parents on-line in Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, the Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Zimbabwe, USA, throughout the UK and in January we will be adding a Dyslexia school in Kenya plus our first practitioner in New Zealand. 

These are exciting times to join the team, you don't need previous qualifcations, just an enthusiasm to make a difference to others.

In 2013 we will see the results of the Practitioners' research projects in Saudi Arabia and the Republic of Ireland plus my literacy and numeracy research through the International Association for Health and Learning for a community of nursing undergraduates in England.

I also hope to have several practitioners replicating my work in different Universities across the UK. 

In addition we expect to get the level 1 programme its first international accreditation.

When you become a Practitioner, you will have all the tools you need to succeed:

• Free monthly Continuous Professional Calls
• Workbooks for literacy, numeracy and more in development
• An accreditation process and product discount
• Commission for referrals
• Free Youtube video introductions for your clients
• Access to an on-line training platform
• Low cost upgrade training for those trained before September 2011.

This is a readymade business that can give you immense personal satisfaction and make a real difference to peoples' lives."

I hope that was of interest and you can read more about Olive's work with Empowering Learning here.

What Is Dysgraphia? - YouTube

Dysgraphia is a learning disability that affects writing, which requires a complex set of motor and information processing skills.

Dysgraphia makes the act of writing difficult. It can lead to problems with spelling, poor handwriting, and putting thoughts on paper.

People with dysgraphia can have trouble organizing letters, numbers, and words on a line or page. This can result partly from:

• Visual-spatial difficulties: trouble processing what the eye sees
• Language processing difficulty: trouble processing and making sense of what the ear hears

As with all learning disabilities (LD), dysgraphia is a lifelong challenge, although how it manifests may change over time.

A student with this disorder can benefit from specific accommodations in the learning environment. Extra practice learning the skills required to be an accomplished writer can also help.

Read more about Dysgraphia

The Definition of 'Learning Disability' differs in US and UK

In the United States and Canada, the term learning disability is used to refer to psychological and neurological conditions that affect a person's communicative capacities and potential to be taught effectively.

The term includes such conditions as dysgraphia (writing disorder), dyslexia (reading disorder), dyscalculia (mathematics disorder) and developmental aphasia.In the United Kingdom, the term learning disability is used more generally to refer to developmental disability.

Someone with a learning disability does not necessarily have low or high intelligence, nor any innate inability to learn.

It just means this individual has an impairment to their ability due to a processing disorder, such as auditory processing or visual processing, that is detrimental to learning from traditional teaching methods.

Learning disabilities are usually identified by school psychologists through testing of intelligence, academics and processes of learning.

For more information about the topic Learning disability, read the full article at Wikipedia.org, or see the following related articles:

Mental retardation — Mental retardation is a term for a pattern of persistently slow learning of basic motor and language skills ("milestones") during childhood, and a ...  > read more

Dyslexia — Developmental dyslexia is a condition or learning disability which causes difficulty with reading and writing. Its standard definition is a ...  > read more

Special education — Special education, describes an educational alternative that focuses on the teaching of students with academic, behavioral, health, or physical needs ...  > read more

Brain damage — Brain damage or brain injury is the destruction or degeneration of brain cells. Brain damage may occur due to a wide range of conditions, illnesses, ...  > read more

Dyslexia Through the looking glass

Human beings understand words reflected in a mirror without thinking about it, just like those written normally, at least for a few instants. Researchers from the Basque Centre on Cognition, Brain and Languages (Spain) have shown this in a study that could also help to increase our understanding of the phenomenon of dyslexia.

Most people can read texts reflected in a mirror slowly and with some effort, but a team of scientists from the Basque Centre on Cognition, Brain and Language (BCBL) has shown for the first time that we can mentally turn these images around and understand them automatically and unconsciously, at least for a few instants.

"At a very early processing stage, between 150 and 250 milliseconds, the visual system completely rotates the words reflected in the mirror and recognises them," says Jon Andoni Duñabeitia, lead author of the study, "although the brain then immediately detects that this is not the correct order and 'remembers' that it should not process them in this way."

To carry out this study, which has been published in the journal NeuroImage, the researchers used electrodes to monitor the brain activity of 27 participants while carrying out two experiments in front of a computer screen.

In the first, the participants were shown words with some of the letters and other information rotated for 50 milliseconds (an imperceptible flash, which is processed by the brain); while in the second case the entire word in the mirror was rotated (for example HTUOM INSTEAD OF MOUTH).

The results of the encephalogram showed in both cases that, at between 150 and 250 milliseconds, the brain's response upon seeing the words as reflected in the mirror was the same as when they are read normally.

Better understanding of dyslexia
"These results open a new avenue for studying the effects of involuntary rotation of letters and words in individuals with reading difficulties (dyslexia) and writing problems (dysgrafia)," Duñabeitia explains.

The researcher gives reassurance to parents who worry when their children reverse their letters when they start to write: "This is the direct result of the mirror rotation property of the visual system." In fact, it is common for children to start to write this way until they learn the "established" forms at school.

"Now we know that rotating letters is not a problem that is exclusive to some dyslexics, since everybody often does this in a natural and unconscious way, but what we need to understand is why people who can read normally can inhibit this, while others with difficulties in reading and writing cannot, confusing 'b' for 'd', for example," explains Duñabeitia.

The scientific community has yet to discover how reading, a skill that is learnt relatively late in human development, can inhibit mental rotation in a mirror, a visual capacity that is common to many animals.

"A tiger is a tiger on the right side and the left side, but a word read in the mirror loses its meaning -- although now we know that it is not as incomprehensible for our visual system as we thought, because it is capable of processing it as if it were correct," the researcher concludes.

Widening our perceptions of reading and writing difficulties

2 new studies shed light on different types of dyslexia and dysgraphia

Learning to read and write are complex processes, which can be disrupted in various ways, leading to disorders known as dyslexia and dysgraphia.

Two new studies, published in a recent special issue of Elsevier's Cortex (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00109452) provide evidence of this variety, suggesting that effective treatment needs to take it into account.

A group of researchers from the Universities of Bari and Rome in Italy studied the reading and writing abilities of 33 Italian dyslexic children, comparing their performance with that of children with normal reading ability.

Italian is an "orthographically transparent" language, meaning that letters tend to correspond to the same sounds, whereas many letters in the English alphabet change their sound from word to word (like the "c" in car and city).

However, the new study showed that even in Italian, in which it is relatively straightforward to convert sounds into letters, children still have difficulties in spelling.

Younger children with dyslexia generally performed worse than proficient readers; however, the older ones showed a more selective impairment when spelling words, suggesting that knowledge of vocabulary may be more important in spelling than previously thought.

The other study, from Tel Aviv University, Israel, provided the first systematic description of a type of reading disorder called "attentional dyslexia" in which children identify letters correctly, but the letters jump between words on the page, e.g., "kind wing" is read as "wind king".

Teachers and neuropsychologists often notice that children substitute letters when reading, but in this type of dyslexia the substitutions are not caused by inability to identify letters or convert them to sounds; they result from migrations of letters between words.

The findings showed that letters would mostly migrate to the same position in another word, so the first letter of one word would switch places with the first letter of another word.

Awareness to the existence of this type of dyslexia is important, because it suggests a straightforward way to assist these children in reading - by presenting a ‎single word at a time, e.g., with the help of a word-sized window cut in a piece of cardboard.

More information on this report - Widening our perceptions of reading and writing difficulties

Slideshow: Dyslexia, Dysgraphia and Procedural Learning Deficits

To see the complete slideshow click on the first slide


To view other slideshows from the IDA Conference, Reading, Literacy and Reading, click on the link here

Medialexie: Computer Tools to Overcome Reading Difficulties?

Medialexie is another computer software and hardware company that provides tools for people with reading difficulties and not only dyslexia, but a range of other conditions.

From their website, they state that;
Medialexie has acquired an incontestable reputation for quality, reactivity and competence in France and abroad. Medialexie offers an efficient solution to the problems met by people touched by dyslexia, dypraxia, dysgraphia, dysorthography or confronted with difficulties in written or oral communication.

Medialexie has conceived a computor software that functions on a PC. The software comes with an ensemble of equipment (headset, scanner, etc.) and associated services (training in its use, technical support, personalised follow-up, user community, etc.).

The company offers their product information in 3 languages; English (US), French (Canada) and German (Swiss). The many website is in French bit do not be alarmed, simply click on the US flag to change that to English.

NB: We have no connection with this company and have no reason to think that they do not do what they say. Just to let you know that we do not endorse products in any way.

However, we would very much like to hear from anyone who has used these products, to get your valuable feedback on them. Please get in touch with us if you have used their products and found them beneficial or not. Thank you!

Mindroom - Learning Difficulties - Dyslexia Information

Mindroom - Learning Difficulties - Dyslexia Information

DYSLEXIA
Dyslexia is characterised by specific problems in learning to read and write.
It is best described as a combination of abilities and difficulties that affect the learning process in one or more of reading, spelling, writing.

Dyscalcula - problems with mathematics

Dysgraphia - a learning disability resulting from the difficulty in expressing thoughts in writing. It generally refers to extremely poor handwriting.

There are three types of dyslexia– motor, visual, auditory

Associated features

• Poor working memory – especially for sequenced, auditory – linguistic material
• Difficulties with phonology – the sounds in words.
• Problems in distinguishing left/right
• Poor sense of direction
• Difficulties with time and tense
• Visual and auditory perceptual difficulties
• Unexpectedly poor reading in relation to general ability
• Spelling problems
• Difficulty remembering telephone numbers and appointments
• Bad handwriting
• Difficulty learning things by rote e.g. months of the year
• Poor concentration

Click here for further recommended reading on Dyslexia