[disclaimer]I apologize in advance to any dyslexic sufferers out there who I might inadvertently offend as a result of my extreme ignorance on the subject of dyslexia.[/disclaimer]
My limited understanding of dyslexia is that it is an organic disorder (as opposed to a psychological one) and that, at least in some forms, only affects a person’s ability to read and/or write. In other words, there are some people out there who were born with dyslexia and whose brains juxtapose letters, but who are perfectly normal in every other regard.
The ability to read and write, however, is not organic as far as I know. It is a learned ability and one which has existed for a relatively short amount of time in the history of our species (I don’t believe there are any examples of written languages older than 4,000 years or so).
In other words, it seems like people may have “suffered” with dyslexia for tens of thousands of years, but the symptoms would not have manifested themselves until somebody got around to inventing writing.
If this is the case, it just seems extremely odd to me that there would be a neurological defect that specifically affects a function of the brain that wasn’t even used until fairly recently.
Any thoughts on this?
Regards,
Barry
I’m so glad I wasn’t born in China. I don’t speak Chinese very well at all, and I would have a miserable time growing up there as a result!
There are a number of ways that organic damage to the brain can affect perceptions. I suggest you read Oliver Sach’s book, “The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat” for some fascinating and starling examples.
I can certainly udnerstand how organic brain damage can affect perceptions in general, since all perceptions are filtered through the brain in the first place. It’s the specificity of dyslexia that I have trouble understanding, i.e. the fact that the only manifestation is (at least in some cases) juxtiposed letters but not other symbols (such as numbers).
And yes, I know that some people do have problems juxtiposing numbers as well as letters, but my understanding is that some forms of dyslexia relate solely to letters. Since letters are an artificial creation and inherently no different than any other printed character one might see, why would an organic disorder be so discriminating?
There is a very specific part of the brain that handles speech and, in this case, symbol recognition. Similar disorders can affect the memory of faces.
For instance, I have a photographic memory, but I can’t remember words or names, sometimes at all. Sometimes I have to re-read things several times before I can actually even understand the words, and I have to be very careful when I type.
I’d suppose there is not much difference as a disorder like this as there is from someone being insanely good with symbols and languages. That part of the brain can just be over- or under-developed.
The way it was explained to me is that with language, the brain processes things internally much faster than it can relate to the outside world. In other words, you brain forms the word very quickly, then has to filter it through the different commands to your hands to write them out, or to your vocal chords to sound them out. It’s not the word creation that is getting messed up, but rather how the brain slows things down and stores it while other parts of the brain work on it. Supposedly it’s fairly similar to stuttering in this respect.
I suppose one could argue that it’s not really a “defect” since the brain wasn’t really wired to do this sort of thing naturally anyway, but since most brains do it ok and it’s only a few that get hung up, the few slower ones are labled as defective.
Hmmmm… So does that mean that a dyslexic person wouldn’t have any problem recognizing a single letter that was, say, printed on a card, but if it were seen as part of a word a different part of the brain would kick in and the letter might then get reversed?
For some people, the letter will always be reversed or be randomly reversed or not reversed, whether in a word or by itself. For others, the letter is always easily recognized and processed as a single symbol, but the sequencing of the symbols gets out of order when in a word/series.
I’ve got some of both. Just for fun!
For instance, I tend to see letters all the right way around, and write them easily the right way around. But I get the sequence of letters messed up, see ‘saw’ instead of ‘was’ or swap the first two letters in a sequence (‘asw’ instead of ‘saw’). BUT, with other kinds of symbols, the individual symbols can swap direction in my perception without warning.
For instance, one-way signs and no-left-turn signs. I’ll read the text the right way around, but I’ll SWEAR the arrow was pointing the other way. Fortunately, I learned very early not to trust my perception of the symbol, so I always check for other cues, such as which way the cars are pointed on the road, which way the signs face, and whether it makes any sense for a no-right-turn sign to be there in the first place.
Thanks for the anecdotes, Hedra! As I said in my disclaimer, I fully admit my profound ignorance on the subject.
My original assumption was that there are some dyslexics who only have trouble with letters but not with other symbols. A left arrow would always be a left arrow to them, for example, and a pictograph showing a man with his left arm raised would never appear to them as a man with his right arm raised. And it just seemed odd to have an organic brain disfunction that would only affect the perception of one set of artificial symbols but not another.
Perhaps my original assumption was flawed, however, and there aren’t any dyslexics who only suffer from reversed lettering. Or else. as alluded to above, the reverse lettering only occurs in the context of language (i.e., as part of words) and not as stand-alone symbols.
Brian: I am extremely dyslexic (for lack of a better term) when it comes to typing. I routinely type “particualr” instead of “particular,” “unfortuantely” instead of “unfortunately,” etc. It may just be lack of coordination, but I do it consistently with certain words, especially when typing rapidly. I’ve often wondered whether this is, in fact, a form of dyslexia or not.
I work as a professional writer, by the way, and all I can say is thank heavens for spell check!
But, I had a great elementary school (Northrup, Alhambra, CA. Moved back to Houston later) and observant parents. So, I fared well. A+ student through 10 years, got lazy last half of HS, but still a 3.82 GPA. Went to college, too (for a while, decided to build stuff instead).
I just learned to deal with it. Sometimes, though, I overcompensate. My close associates (workmates, friends, family) can all see it in me, others haven’t a clue.
My theme to this board is that the brain is far more weird than you can imagine, once you get to know it (like my ex-girlfriend).
Yes, it is quite possible that some people have dyslexia only for letters. As each person’s brain learns symbols it uses several different parts of the brain to process them.
So, some people use a visual strategy to recognize letters. Others use an auditory strategy. I think the different ways that brains learn to understand language are vast and subtle. There is no single “language center” in the brain that is the same for everyone. Language is an incredibly complex phenomenon inside the brain.
For your question, it is quite possible for someone to understand or “encode” numbers differently from letters. The brain may recognize that numbers are a different category, and use slightly different areas to process numbers and letters.
There is also a very weird phenomenon of “feed forward”, in which the perception of the eye itself is changed depending on what the brain is expecting to see.
Then there are different types of memory. Some memory is physical, e.g. the afterimage that you see after staring at a red light and then closing your eyes. But there are internal image memories – a page of print can be flashed at you (I forget how long the exposure has to be, but it has to be very brief) and you can temporarily read the page with your eyes closed, but your eyes don’t move. You are essentially scanning a memory of the page with your consciousness. This is really weird stuff, but true.
Typing is a learned skill, and the brain has to coordinate a huge number of things to do it well. Everyone’s brain will assign different clumps of neurons to do the task.
I have “disfacexia.”
I read very well and have good retention of what I read.
But I cannot remember faces. I can be talking to you for any length of time but won’t recognize you five minutes later. And if you’re wearing different clothes forgetaboutit.
<Numerous embarrassing examples deleted>
There are many different types of dyslexia. A book I just started reading seems to think it’s not that the dyslexics brain is not working fast enough to process the information, but the other way around. It’s working too fast and things are getting mixed up in the process.
From what I’ve gleaned so far, it says that the person can tell when they start to get overexcited or nervous, and use certain techniques to calm themselves down. I can see their point when I am helping someone with their homework, once they calm down and stay ‘in the zone’ (for lack of a better term) it becomes easier to read and to write the letters and numbers the right way.
When I’m tired, sick, upset, or excited in a good way, sometimes my speech sounds quite odd to others. I don’t even notice it til someone tells me. Doesn’t always happen, though, which is what I find weird.
And IMing me is a feat only my friends can accomplish
Also, some people have severe difficulty with right/left distinctions (I think some of this has already been alluded to). In a hunting/gathering lifestyle this may not be overly important - it depends on what you’re doing to a large extent. But if you’re spearing a critter for dinner being able to aim at it, rather deciding if it’s to your left or right, may be the cruicial factor in survival.
So perhaps it’s an extreme end of the human spectrum. There is considerable variation in how individuals process spacial information, including left/right distinctions and the ability to visualize in 3-D and whether or not a person can “rotate” a 3-D image in their minds. Dyslexic traits may actually be an advantage in some circumstances and it’s only our artificial, heavily literate society where they become a real detriment.
I just wanted to comment on this part of the OP. It doesn’t seem odd at all to me that there might be a defect in a function that wasn’t used until recently. That seems far more likely to me than a defect in a function that has been in use for a long time…there has been less time to “iron out the kinks” evolutionarily speaking, in the new function. I think this is close to what **Broomstick ** is saying as well.
