Dyslexia, Reading difficulties and vision

Although Dyslexia is recognised as a cognitive disorder it is prudent to have children's eyes tested to rule out vision problems.

Children do not know if they are perceiving the world differently from others. In fact few of us do, even into middle age.

To help a child who may be have difficulty reading, it is good practice to rule out any physical or eye issues.

Many optometrists believe that all reading difficulties and Dyslexia is caused by vision problems.

This is certainly not the case, and many parents are paying out for expensive bogus treatments and special glasses, which are ineffective.

Have your child's eyesight thoroughly checked to rule out any physical defect and, if their reading difficulties remain, then look at ways to help them overcome  their difficulties around Dyslexia.

I hope you will be able to find some help from the articles in this blog.

You will certainly be able to find good information on the latest scientific research and discoveries around Dyslexia and other cognitive disorders.

Unfortunately, you will not find any 'quick fixes' or any 'cures' for Dyslexia. The first step is acceptance and then you need to support your child in developing a strategy to learn and to live with Dyslexia.

Language: How we gave colours names, and it messed with our brains

Imagine that you had a rainbow-coloured piece of paper that smoothly blends from one colour to the other. This will be our map of colour space.



Now just as you would on a real map, we draw boundaries on it. This bit here is pink, that part is orange, and that’s yellow.



Here is what such a map might look like to a native English speaker.

If you think about it, there’s a real puzzle here.  



Why should different cultures draw the same boundaries?



If we speak different languages with largely independent histories, shouldn’t our ancestors have carved up the visual atlas rather differently?



This question was first addressed by Brent Berlin and Paul Kay in the late 1960s.  



They wanted to know if there are universal, guiding laws that govern how cultures arrive at their colour atlas.





Here’s what they found. Languages have differing numbers of colour words, ranging from two to about eleven. Yet after looking at 98 different languages, they saw a pattern.



It was a pretty radical idea, that there is a certain fixed order in which these colour names arise. This was a common path that languages seem to follow, a road towards increasing visual diversity and they suggested that the road looked like this:

The figure above is really telling a story. What it says is this. If a language has just two colour terms, they will be a light and a dark shade – blacks and whites.



Add a third colour, and it’s going to be red. Add another, and it will be either green or yellow – you need five colors to have both and when you get to six colours, the green splits into two, and you now have a blue.



What we’re seeing here is a deeply trodden road that most languages seem to follow, towards greater visual discernment (92 of their 98 languages seemed to follow this basic route).



Critics of Kay and Berlin said they were reading too much from too little. Some argued that their study was too small, that they surveyed too few people from each language.



They also said that study was skewed, as most the languages were from industrialized societies with written scripts. And to top it off, their methods weren’t very quantitative.



To respond to these criticisms, the authors launched what they called the World Colour Survey, a project that started collecting data in the late 1970s. This was a survey of 110 languages, all spoken by pre-industrial societies, many that have no written script.



Read more of this article here: Empirical Zeal

Free Vision and Learning Guide - Download

Dr. Kellye Knueppel noted that what a client's daughter was experiencing was not uncommon. Letter and /or word reversal.

“From approximately age 5 to age 11, directionality concepts are developing, so reversals are normal at younger ages,” she said. 

Dr. Knueppel also shared that educators are usually taught that reversals are normal until age 8, and typically, no action is taken even if the child at ages 6 or 7 reverses things more frequently than his or her peers.

“We have tests to determine if the amount of reversals the child is doing is actually age appropriate or not,” Dr. Knueppel said. 

“If it is, we would just monitor the situation. If the reversals are more frequent than they should be, we would work on laterality and directionality concepts.”

If you notice frequent reversals, as she did with her client's daughter, consider a Functional Vision Test. 

You may find out that, as Dr. Knueppel noted, your child’s word reversals are normal.  However, if you find there is a problem, you can pursue the treatment that will allow for healthy visual development.

The Vision and Learning Guide is filled with information that can help parents and teachers determine if a child has a vision problem.

It provides an overview of how vision can impact learning, and includes:

• The Vision Quiz to help you quickly assess a child's symptoms.
• Samples of what schoolwork looks like from a person with vision problems.
• Classroom stress points and modifications to help students.
• Links to studies on the efficacy of vision therapy.

The Vision and Learning Guide provides the critical first step to determining if a child has a vision problem.

Download Your Free Vision and Learning Guide

Inclusivity Requires A Paradigm Shift

A billion is obviously an extremely large number of individuals, that have needs to be met.

In the Western world the populations are ageing, improvements in healthcare are helping people live longer – this means that the number of people who require assistance coping with age related conditions is only going to grow.

There are likely to be ever increasing numbers of people with poor vision, hearing loss, limited mobility and cognitive difficulties and we need to ensure that they are not excluded.

This is what is sometimes referred to as a Megatrend. Megatrends are great forces in societal development that will affect all areas – state, market and civil society – for many years to come.

Another Megatrend is the rapid growth and increased mobility of populations.

This will put a strain on all kinds of resources but from an inclusion point of view there is great deal of cross over with the needs of the disability community.

Economic migrants and refugees from war and famine will often face language barriers to inclusion in their new countries.

Couple this with the need to educate and raise literacy levels in the general population as a whole and you have a problem that is just too big for governments to ignore.

Read the remainder of this article here

3-D movies hampered by vision problems

Three to 9 million people in the USA have vision problems that keep them from enjoying such 3-D movies as Avatar and Toy Story 3, estimates the American Optometric Association and as many as 56% of people between 18 and 38 years of age suffer from symptoms related to depth-perception problems.

These problems have to do with binocular vision, the ability to align both eyes on a target and combine the visual images from the two eyes into a single, three-dimensional perception.

"We have 3-D because we have two eyes in our head in slightly different places," Maino explained. "When the brain puts two images together, that's when we get the 3-D effect."

"3-D is really our ability to judge distances," he said. "It's a real nice survival trait, so we could tell how far away that saber-toothed tiger is and have him for lunch rather than the other way around."

Movies done in 3-D recreate this effect by feeding different images into each eye, Maino said. In the early days, 3-D glasses would have one red lens and one blue lens, and there would be one red image and one blue image on the screen separated by a little distance. One eye would be able to see only the red and the other only the blue, and the brain would fit them together to form an in-depth perception.

The technology today is more advanced. Now, 3-D is created using polarized lenses that pick up separate images or by timing the images between the two eyes. "One image will be placed on one eye and then very quickly the other image is placed in the other eye," Maino said. "When the brain puts that together, it gives the sense of 3-D."

However, people who are having problems with their binocular vision will either not be able to perceive the illusion of 3-D, or they will find that the movies or TV shows actually give them "visual hangover," said Leonard Press, a spokesman for the American Optometric Association and optometric director of the Vision and Learning Center in Fair Lawn, N.J.

An association poll found that headaches, blurred vision and dizziness are the most common side effects from 3-D movies for people who have binocular vision difficulties. "After the movie, they're a bit dizzy, and it takes them awhile to get back to normal," Press said.

Several different vision disorders could be the cause of the problem, including:

• Amblyopia, or lazy eye, which occurs when one eye does not see as well as the other. "Because of that difference between the two eyes, the ability to see 3-D is greatly reduced or absent," Maino said.

• Strabismus, or crossed eyes, in which the eyes do not line up in the same direction when focusing. Ultimately, a person with strabismus begins to suffer from double vision or loses the ability to see in 3-D.

• Convergence insufficiency, in which the eyes are incapable of turning toward each other to fix on the same distance.

Any of these can be treated by an optometrist or ophthalmologist. In fact, Maino said, the new 3-D movies are giving some people their first clue of a vision problem they may have had for a long time without recognizing it.

The problems, though, can be treated using optometric vision therapy, in which eye patches or special pairs of glasses are utilized to teach the eyes how to work together, Press and Maino said. Some of the techniques already are used to help kids with amblyopia or strabismus.

"It's a form of physical therapy for the eyes," Press said. "The key is helping your eyes work together with your brain. You do different activities that help both eyes work together. It's almost like lifting weights."

By the end of vision therapy, "we should have someone who has single, clear, two-eyed vision," Maino said.

Dyslexia is not a problem of Vision or Opthalmology

Below is an Abstract from a scientific paper in the US Journal of Pediatrics.

This article discusses at length the possible causes and effects of Dyslexia in children and in particular, it explores the argument that vision and the use of eye exercises can improve the condition.

ABSTRACT
Learning disabilities, including reading disabilities, are commonly diagnosed in children. Their etiologies are multifactorial, reflecting genetic influences and dysfunction of brain systems.

Learning disabilities are complex problems that require complex solutions. Early recognition and referral to qualified educational professionals for evidence-based evaluations and treatments seem necessary to achieve the best possible outcome.

Most experts believe that dyslexia is a language-based disorder. Vision problems can interfere with the process of learning; however, vision problems are not the cause of primary dyslexia or learning disabilities.

Scientific evidence does not support the efficacy of eye exercises, behavioral vision therapy, or special tinted filters or lenses for improving the long-term educational performance in these complex pediatric neurocognitive conditions.

Diagnostic and treatment approaches that lack scientific evidence of efficacy, including eye exercises, behavioual vision therapy, or special tinted filters or lenses, are not endorsed and should not be recommended.

The full article can be found here ..........

Dyslexia - Multi-sensory Learning

We are creatures of great sensitivity and have the ability to understand things from many perspectives. The most effective teaching method for children with learning differences is to engage a multisensory approach. Multisensory teaching strives to utilise all the child's senses, to relay information or convey meaning to the students.

The teacher accesses the auditory, visual, and kinesthetic pathways to enhance memory and learning because they know that by using as many sensory paths as possible the more likely that the message will be understood and be absorbed.

For example, when learning the vowel combination “oa” the student might first look at it and then have to trace the letters in the air while speaking out loud.

This combination of listening, looking, and moving around creates a more lasting impression for the student. Relationships and connections between items and events, will become more memorable and concepts can be built up.

Multisensory learning started back in the 1920s by Dr. Samuel Orton at the Mobile Mental Health Clinic in Iowa. Dr. Samuel Orton, one of the first to recognise, what we now call 'dyslexia' in students.

He suggested that teaching the “fundamentals of phonic association with letter forms, both visually and kinesthetically presented and reproduced in writing, until the correct associations were built up,” would be the best learning approach for students of all ages.

Dr. Orton had his patients trace, copy, and write letters whilst saying their corresponding sounds and associations. Today this method is known as multisensory learning.

Children experiencing dyslexia often struggle with auditory and/or visual processing. They have trouble recalling words and how they are pronounced. This means that they do not comprehend the roles that sounds play in words.

These children have difficulties rhyming words as well as blending sounds together to form words. Children who experience dyslexia, do not understand or acquire the alphabetic code. They are unable to grasp and retain the 'simple' repetative learning and memorising systems expected of them in the primary grades.

If a child with dyslexia is given a task that uses just hearing and vision, without drawing upon other senses, the student will be at a disadvantage. When taught with a multisensory approach, children will learn alphabetic patterns and words by utilising all pathways – hearing (auditory), seeing (visual), touching (tactile) and moving (kinesthetic).

Dyslexic students do not need more of the same instruction in class but a different type of instruction. They need to learn basic language sounds and the letters or letter combinations, that are used to make them. Becuase you are engaged in a building process, you need to starting from the very beginning and move forward in a gradual but logical, step by step process, which builds on the previous step.

For this to be retained, the children need to be taught to do this by using their eyes, ears, voices, and hands. We are a sensitive multi-talented creature that enjoys stimulation, challenge and achievement. Children experiencing Dyslexia are no different from the rest of us. They need to be stimulated, challenged and be able to feel that other great sense, the sense of achievement. Something we all crave and enjoy when we succeed in learning a new skill.

Conficious Proverb
Tell me, and I will forget.
Show me, and I may remember.
Involve me, and I will understand.