Know if you have dyslexia And recognizing the most common signs is important to deal with and receive appropriate treatment, whether you are a child or an adult.
Reading and writing are complicated strategies to acquire. Most children learn to do it without difficulty with a certain degree of maturation and a good pedagogical environment.
However, for some children with normative development can be something truly complex. We are faced with children with developmental dyslexia.
If you are not sure if you or your child has it or not, then I will tell you How to know if you have dyslexia.
What is dyslexia?
The dyslexia Implies a problem or difficulty in learning to read. It is included within a broad classification, which refers to the specific learning difficulties (AED).
It manifests itself in difficulties of access to the lexicon and may be due to problems in phonological, auditory and / or visual processing.
It is often accompanied by problems related to deficits in working memory, syntactic knowledge and processing speed.
Dyslexia occurs in people with a cognitive development or intelligence within or above normal. In addition, they do not suffer sensory alterations and have received an instruction in the appropriate reading-writing in which, nevertheless, they present difficulties.
It is the most frequent cause of difficulties in reading and learning and a very important factor when it comes to school dropout or failure, since it affects reading but also manifests itself in writing.
Dyslexia is often associated with calculus disorder (Discalculia) and written expression, as well as in children with Disorder by Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) .
It is important to keep in mind that dyslexia is not, in any case:
- An intelligence problem
- A sensory disability
- A problem of lack of motivation
- A problem of attention
- A maturation problem
- The consequence of an emotional problem
Symptomatology and diagnosis of dyslexia
Dyslexia implies a difficulty in learning and in the use of academic skills, evidenced by the presence of at least one of the following symptoms that have persisted for at least 6 months, despite interventions aimed at these difficulties.
It is a specific learning disorder with difficulties in reading, which implies:
1) Reading inaccurate or slow words with effort (eg, reading loose words aloud incorrectly or slowly and hesitantly, often guessing words, has difficulty expressing words).
2) He has difficulty understanding the meaning of what he reads (for example, he can read a text accurately but does not understand the sentence, the relationships between them, the inferences or the deep sense of what he is reading).
Dyslexia accounts for about 80% of diagnoses of learning difficulties and is usually present between 2% and 8% of children in school.
In addition, it is usually more frequent in children and also in subjects who have a family history of this learning problem.
It is also important to note that dyslexia can not be diagnosed before a certain age, when it becomes visible because the child has a delay in acquiring written language skills in front of his or her age partners.
It is important to diagnose dyslexia early, because from the age of 12, if it is not diagnosed, it will already present many problems.
In the face of minor suspicions, it is best to start the diagnostic process even if you are not sure.
It is impossible to distinguish, in the early stages of a child's schooling, between dyslexia and some other learning difficulties. There are times when there are overlaps and the differential diagnosis could not be made.
In order to make an appropriate diagnosis, the cognitive processes that are involved in reading and writing must be evaluated, since this is the only correct way to access the diagnosis.
We must evaluate reading and writing. As far as reading is concerned, it is appropriate to evaluate its reading speed, how it syntactically processes sentences, how it accesses semantic contents, how it integrates knowledge, and its operational memory.
We must also evaluate how he reads the frequent and infrequent words.
In terms of writing, we must evaluate the ability to copy words properly, spelling errors, letter (if adjusted to appropriate size), organization of text, expression of knowledge through writing .
11 characteristics to know if you can present dyslexia
1. You have problems in reading speed and accuracy
People with dyslexia often present problems of reading accuracy and speed. Thus, they tend to focus their attention on reading to read mechanically and decode letters and words.
This causes the cognitive resources to be derived to that task and therefore the speed and the precision are altered.
2. You have difficulties in verbal and phonological coding
There are different works that have tried to prove the existence of perceptive problems in children who have dyslexia.
It has been concluded that people with dyslexia have perceptual problems when the stimuli presented to them are verbally labeled.
This means that there are no problems when the perception is visual, but there are difficulties when verbal tagging is involved.
For example, some research has found that children with reading problems, when drawing figures that previously had to be retained mnemically, showed difficulties when the stimulus carried verbal labeling.
3. You have no difficulties in other areas or intelligence problems
The verbal problem that people with dyslexia have is not conceptual, since they have a good intelligence . The problem arises when they must abstract and generalize verbal information in verbal tasks.
However, as we have already mentioned, there are some people associated with Dyslexia who may present other problems such as Dyscalculia The ADHD.
Many children with dyslexia are sometimes isolated and have interpersonal problems and many of them end up considering them children with intellectual problems.
At other times, the family or school considers that it is a problem of motivation or lack of effort on the part of the child.
4. You have poor reading comprehension
When reading, people with dyslexia remember the chains of words to the letter and therefore, as a consequence, are ineffective in remembering the exact terms and when they should read directly thanks to the meaning.
They are able to read but do not learn from what they read. They find it difficult to make inferences from the text and draw conclusions from it.
5. You have little syntactic mastery
This is another linguistic problem. Differences between people with and without dyslexia have revealed that the former have a shorter vocabulary, less verbal fluency for verbal descriptions and a syntactic use in sentence formation, less complex compared to people without dyslexia.
6. Your writing may be affected
People with dyslexia may have many misspellings, thus affecting writing. In dictations or copies, for example, people with dyslexia omit, substitute, add letters or words.
Writing may become illegible and may present difficulties in reading what they have written. They present difficulties to memorize and automate everything that refers to orthographic rules. Sometimes, they write with a lot of pressure or with little (and can not be read).
7. You can present or have presented disinterest in the school and low grades
Although they are not symptoms of dyslexia, they are consequences, side effects of dyslexia.
Many children, in their school stage, end up showing disinterest in the study and low grades because they have a hard time doing all the academic tasks given the difficulties they present in reading.
8. You may have emotional problems
Many children with dyslexia end up presenting, as a consequence, certain characteristics as low self-esteem , Feelings of security , etc. And all this is due to the problems they present and to the conception that the environment can have about them.
9. Do you have difficulty reading a text: rhythm, inversion, location??
People with dyslexia, in reading, often confuse letters, exchange syllables, repeat, can suppress them or add letters or words.
Sometimes, when they are reading, they invent words, skip lines, they may have problems with intonation or rhythm.
They do not understand, as we have said, what they read and can even perceive that words or lines"move".
10. You have specific characteristics in regard to vision
Although the medical examinations do not ratify it, many people with dyslexia present problems in the vision. They are often lacking in perception and have peripheral vision.
11. You have motor problems
It is quite common for them to present psychomotor problems and to have clumsiness. They often present problems of coordination (movements, kicking a ball, tying the laces or buttoning).
They have trouble understanding the concepts of space and time. And they often present problems in sports that require coordination or teamwork.
Signs of alarm in dyslexia
We also find different warning signs that can help us detect that we may be facing a child with dyslexia.
1. In children under 6 years of age
In children under six, we can find some signs that can help us investigate if we are facing a case of dyslexia:
- There is a delay of the language and / or difficulties in the expression
- The child performs reading in mirror
- Difficulties in identifying letters
- Confuses words that sound similar
- It presents difficulties in identifying sounds that are associated with letters
- Family history of dyslexic problems
- Absence of phonological awareness
- Alternate good and bad days at school
- Difficulty learning typical songs of children's education
- Not the jump? In terms of reading speed to overcome syllabic reading
2. In children between 7-11 years
- Reading Errors or Correct but not Automated
- Has difficulty reading foreign words or non-words
- His reading is slow and his understanding is poor
- Change the order or reverse letters and numbers in both read and write
- He presents problems to decode words in isolation and not in context
- Write in mirror
- Confuse right with left
- It has a bad handwriting and the text is messy
- Has difficulty in spelling that does not fit his level
- Expressed better orally than written
- You may have trouble pronouncing some words
- Sometimes they look for synonyms to words and they are confused in the meaning
- Problems with the alphabet
- Problems in rhymes
- False starts, hesitations or lose the site of the text in which they were reading
- Inability to remember what they have read
- When asked questions of texts read, usually respond more with general knowledge that have more than what they just read
- Problems with multiplication tables
- Lack of self confidence
3. From the age of 12
- Problems concentrating when reading or writing
- Problems in working memory (sometimes you can not remember what you have read)
- Problems of understanding concepts
- Difficulties in organizing your thoughts and space
- Problems of planning and school strategies
- Anxiety or blockage mood problems
- Social Skills Problems
- Aversion to writing and reading
- Slowness
In children, when they are in preschool, there are certain elements that are common in children who end up developing dyslexia but are not signs of dyslexia and can affect other areas.
Some of them may be:
- Problems in the development of speech and vocabulary (slower, difficult to pronounce words or articulate correctly??)
- Has Cross-laterality Or lateral dominance
- Has problems when controlling and managing the pencil / scissors
- Problems in social skills
- Has altered the notions of space and time (does not learn the days of the week, neither yesterday, today and tomorrow????)
- Confuses location of body areas
- Has it presented a delay in the acquisition of certain concepts such as numbers, colors, shapes??
- It is clumsy when it comes to Psychomotricity , Balance and fine motor
- Has problems with instructions, commands, routines, and Attention problems .
References
- Andalusian Association of Dyslexia. General guide on dyslexia.
- Iglesias Musach, M. T. Students with dyslexia: strategies for educators
- Junta de Andalucía. Specific Learning Disabilities: Dyslexia.
- Rivas, R. and Fernández, P. (2000). Dyslexia, dysortography and dysgraphia. Pyramid.