Dyslexia - What is happening?

Factual Questions
1

Tried checking Google and found a number of sites asking questions to test for dyslexia, but not a description of the actual “inner workings” of the condition.

So: What does a dylexic see?

a) Certain letters are swapped, say, “b” and “d” - and those letters are consistently swapped for the dyslexic person - “dog” always looks like “bog” and vice versa. If this is the case, then if the dyslexic was just reading and not writing, they would be fine, right? Their brain would consistently swap the same letters so as far as they are concerned, “b” is pronounced the way most folks pronounce “d”, etc. The only way dyslexia would manifest is through writing, 'cuz when a person tries to write “bog” for “dog” and their “mistake” is pointed out - then they get self conscious and awkward, etc…

b) Letters are not swapped consistently, so a dyslexic can’t trust what they are reading and has more trouble understanding which letter to use, how to pronounce, etc…

c) both types are possible

d) some other manifestestion

Thank you for taking the time.

2

A dyslexic friend of mine once indicated b). There’s one sample point.

3

IANAExpert, however I think there’s an important difference between see and percieve.

4

AFAIK, the problem stemms from the dyslexic’s inability to translate the symbol ( printed letters and words) to the ennunciated vowels and consonants (phonemes) which make up speech.

Lets take the word “bat”.

When we say “bat”, we hear the sounds beginning “buh”, then “ah” and ending with “tuh”.

Dyslexics can’t break down a word’s individual phonemes, and thus cannot assign individual letters to represent those sounds.

5

I am not an expert on this, but have suffered from it.

As a kid, teachers thought I was stupid, especially when it came to maths. It wasn’t until I was older and did some research did I find that what was happening to me was numerical dyslexia. When I look at numbers, they get all jumbled up. This is why I had to cheat in 5th grade on my times-tables… the numbers were all wrong.

I had to train myself to look at only 1 number at a time, memorise it, move on to the next number, memorise it, do the figuring then at the end of all the numbers, finish the problem. Though it sounds horrendously painstaking, it was the only way I could work with numbers.

Oh well, I showed them. Finished high school with a 3.8 gpa and a bacherlor’s degree with a gpa of 3.6 :slight_smile: And they called me stupid…

To this day I still have problems, but because I’ve trained myself to memorise and do figures as I have, it isn’t so bad - I’m fast and accurate as well.

My reading and writing skills are much stronger but I do have occasional problems with this as well, especially if tired, rushed, or extemely stressed. I’ll write letters backwards or have trouble distinguishing letters and have to stop and think about things first.

As for alphabetical dyslexia, it seems that as the person gets older they depend on the context of a sentence (whilst reading) to work out a work they are stuck on. They may have trouble writing as well. From older dyslexic students I’ve worked with it is very frustrating and one of the reasons they dropped out of school, or did so poorly.

As with many problems such as this there are varying degrees of difficulty, and not something easily overcome.

The International Dyslexia Association has a good site. Hope you find some more useful information.