SECTION 4
Last time, we made a general introduction to learning disabilities. Today, we will move on to a more common case-dyslexia. “Dys” means “bad, difficult” and “lexia” means “speech or word” in Greek. Dyslexia literally means the difficulty with words, but it is often used to refer to reading difficulties. According to the U.S. National Institutes of Health, dyslexia is a learning disability that can hinder a person's ability to read, write, spell, and sometimes speak.
What are the characteristics that accompany dyslexia? Classroom teachers may not be able to determine if a student has dyslexia. But they may detect early signs that suggest further assessment by health professionals.A person with dyslexia tends to lack the awareness of sounds in words or sound order. For instance, “left” becomes "felt" when the patient encodes the word.That leads to problems with reading comprehension.In addition to that, dyslexia patients have great difficulties in expressing their thoughts orally, in handwriting, in mathematics and, to make it worse, in figuring out directions in space or time.
It is difficult to obtain a certain diagnosis of dyslexia before a child begins school, but many patients have a history of difficulties that began well before kindergarten. One common misconception about dyslexia is that dyslexic readers write words backwards. In fact, this only occurs in a very small population. Dyslexic people are better identified by writing that does not seem to match their level of intelligence.
Let's back to the history of dyslexia. The term “dyslexia" Is identified by Oswald Berkhan in 1881. The study of reading difficulties dates to the turn of the 20th century. Morgan and Hinshelwood were ophthalmologists, that is, eye doctors. They focused on visual aspect that might underlie the reading difficulty and termed it "congenital word blindness." In 1937, the neurologist, Orton, the most well-known dyslexia researcher, introduced the term “twisted symbols” , meaning frequent letter reversals found in dyslexic reading and spelling.