[Dr. Fernette Eide] Welcome, everyone!
This is the first in what I hope will be
a series of webinars that will be helpful
to you, in our Dyslexic community at
Dyslexicadvantage.com. What I'm going to
do is do a brief overview of Dyslexia, and
talk very briefly about the Dyslexic
Advantage. We can talk more about that in
a future meeting, perhaps, and I'll try at
the end to address some of the questions
that we had in our live webinar.
First of all, it's good to recognize that
one in five people are Dyslexic--extremely
common. What that translates into is
8.4 million school age children here in
the United States who are Dyslexic. For
every one who is identified, there will
be 3 who will be missed. It 's really a
staggering percentage. There are a lot of
reasons for this, but teachers are often
not trained in detail about how to
recognize Dyslexia, and also, it's not
widely understood, either, one of the
common signs and features of Dyslexia.
So, Dyslexic students have strong big
picture skills. They are often known to be
very creative, observant, empathetic,
and great problem solvers. But they are
slower to acquire fine detail, basic
skills like reading ,writing , spelling,
or mastery of math facts. Dyslexia will
look different in different individuals,
because it will vary in terms of a
students age, verbal abilities, motor
abilities, working memory, that short term
memory that helps you keep information in
mind, and individual students learning
strengths; and also, temperament. I'm not
talking in detail about testing here, but
I wanted to introduce some of the common
questions that people have. Testing for
Dyslexia is called a clinical diagnosis,
so it can't be done definitively with a
checklist. It really needs to be done,
ideally, with comprehensive testing with
a professional who has a great deal of
experience with the variations that can
occur with Dyslexia. There is some debate
that exists in terms of the best method,
our preference, as I mentioned, is with
comprehensive testing. Usually that
entails some screening of vision, hearing,
and motor ability, but also, standardized
tests we like to use: a combination of IQ
tests such as the WISC-IV, or the WIAS-IV
for adults. These are standardized tests
that involve estimates of verbal and
non-verbal reasoning, working memory and
processing speed; in addition, there are
so-called achievement tests which look at
performance, for instance, on phonology,
on single-word reading, on passage
reading, listening. There are other tests
that are mentioned here, Nelson Denny is a
particular test that is helpful when
students are applying to the College
Board for accommodations because those
passages in the Nelson Denny reading tests
are really better indicators of challenges
that a student may have with college or
graduate school level reading passages.
Other things mentioned here are CTOPP, and
some of the sub-tests listed: listening,
comprehension, single word reading,
reading comprehension, writing, spelling,
phonology, math. In addition, we like to
make sure that we are not just focusing
on a students weaknesses, we like to find
out what a student likes to do in their
spare time, what they may be particularly
talented in doing; we evaluate creative
work and out-of-school activities. In
general, as much as possible, this should
be part of the basic assessment of
students with Dyslexia. We shouldn't just
focus on the weaknesses because that gives
a very lopsided view of a student:
where they are right now, as well as their
potential in the future.
So the hallmark of Dyslexia testing when
using these methods of ability-achievement
discrepancy is to look at how well a
student may perform with thinking skills,
reasoning skills that are communicated
verbally, or non-verbally with puzzles
or complex shapes or patterns that are
presented in front of them, compared to
for instance, written work or
calculations. That ability-achievement
discrepancy is the foundation for
understanding specific learning
disabilities, meaning that intellectual
ability may be high, but there are certain
patterns of specific weaknesses that are
consistent with a specific learning
disability.
So, if we look at how Dyslexic students
perform when they have a battery of
tests such as this; here, on the Y axis
are the scores that you might see in tests
that are standardly done as part
of the WISC test: this is an example of
a student from our clinic. If average is
10 for age, then these scores,
similarities --that's a measure of
analogical reasoning-- things like
comprehension might be extremely strong.
Here, this student was very high in block
design. So being able to perceive and
replicate different spatial patterns,
these are all above the average of 10.
Here, these other measures, things like
how much information can be kept in mind
at one time, a digit span, numbering,
keeping numbers and letters in order,
and coding--being able to copy different
symbols in a rapid fashion, are below
average. In this student's case,
listening comprehension was at the
98th %tile, single word reading was at the
8th, pseudoword reading was at the
3rd %tile--that's a measure of
phonological awareness, and alphabet
fluency-- how quickly you can actually
name letters of the alphabet when presented
in front of you, was at the 6th. The thing
that I wanted to get across to you here
is that the Dyslexic picture is really one
of peaks and valleys, it's not a flat line.
To look at....these are some additional
sub-tests here, to look at some of the
WIAT achievement scores here, again,
look at 100 here representing standard
scores, we had in our clinic students of
average verbal IQ, Superior, Very
Superior, and even above that. Again,
what I want to convey to you mainly is
the picture--if this is the average range,
what you don't see, is a flat line, which
is more typically the case for
non-Dyslexic students, but instead you
have Dyslexic students who really have
extreme of abilities, and also, very
specific weaknesses. Here, this is Oral
Reading Accuracy, that contribute to the
general reading picture. If we were to
look only at the weaknesses, we are not
really seeing the tremendous potential
that exists among these students.
So now, I am going to briefly go through
the different ages. In elementary school,
typically, Dyslexic students may present
with some of the challenges on the left
column here. Some students may be late
talking, others, parents often say that
they notice they seem to be slower with
letter or other types of naming. They may
have a low interest in books, mild
mispronunciation errors might be seen.
Things like "back-back" instead of
"backpack" , "pisghetti" instead of
"spaghetti", these are mispronunciations
that are not just motor, motorically being
able to pronounce the words, but more
representative of a general issue with
auditory processing and phonology. Often,
Dyslexic students don't 'get' rhymes.
It's because they are not hearing the same
things as non-Dyslexic students are
hearing. They may be slower in learning
to read, have difficulty remembering their
math facts, and also have some right-left
confusion. This is an example of writing
of a student who was told to write lower
case letters. They had a lot of
intrusions, had difficulty knowing what
direction to write the letters. At the
same time, in the early elementary
years, these students may actually be
very socially adept, they may show
themselves to be excellent problem
solvers, be fantastic, for instance, at
real life problem-solving, asking good
questions, and, for instance, show
themselves in science experiments in
class. Some of these students are very
expressive non-verbally, they might be
wonderful builders, great with Legos,
K'nex, things like that, or-- are very
artistic. These students are often
creative. They have lots of ideas, and
they may hide their difficulties.
In late elementary school, the
difficulties change a little bit. You
still have some reading difficulties, of
course, but writing also takes on greater
importance. Examples here: this is a
student who wrote, "I thought I could
climb the mountain." This student had a
great deal of auditory processing
difficulties, and as a result, "could",
"croud", was not very clearly heard, and
as a result, an astute observer could
pick up the writing difficulties were
really a reflection of auditory
processing difficulties that the student
was having. The challenges that late
elementary school students face include
spelling problems, they have often weaker
visual word form, grammatical
difficulties; writing in general may be
disorganized and slow, it may be hard to
get ideas down onto paper. Word finding
is another issue. Some of these students
have actually vivid sensory perceptions
and visual imagery, and it's hard for them
to translate these perceptions into words.
Rote memory also comes online as late
elementary school students are expected
to have more facts at their disposal,
especially if the memorization involves
lists of information that are not linked
by a story: for example, things like state
capitals. It can seem almost impossible to
some students.At the same time, we also
start seeing some real wonderful spatial
talents in students in the late elementary
school years. The science and math
students also become prominent, and some
students find they really excel in sports
and take on leadership positions. These
are students who are often socially adept.
There is strong empathy. They are great
team players. And the arts, as mentioned,
also, clusters of strengths that we see
in students.
In the Middle and High School years`
what is particularly a challenge is the
quantity of reading and writing. It's at
this time where students have to write a
great deal more than previously. The
misunderstanding of syntax, the structure
of sentences, and limitations in
vocabulary really can make schooling
difficult. Standardized tests may also be
difficult. Students may actually follow
quite well in the classroom, but then be
presented with information that is out of
context, like in a standardized exam, and
more subtle weaknesses than reading really
come to bear. As a result, standardized
test performance may be far below what a
student is doing in the regular classroom.
Other issues that are important for
middle and high school and college
students, things like the speed of being
able to complete work, misreading question
prompts. Foreign Language can be a
strength or a weakness for Dyslexic
students. The most typical pattern is that
students may actually fare fairly well by
listening and doing the conversational
aspects of language, but as Foreign
Language progresses in the school system,
and more conjugation and rote memory
rules of language and grammar are
required, then students have difficulty,
If that is a significant issue, or
students have fairly severe auditory
processing difficulties, they really have
trouble hearing the sounds, then we
usually support and recommend a Foreign
Language waiver. Middle, high school,
and college are also the time where word
heavy subjects like science, social
studies can also cause trouble for
students. The important thing I want to
mention here is that there is often a
discrepancy. Dyslexic students are often
quite strong with science, and scientific
thinking. It's only in that middle stage
where a lot of science vocabulary is
presented, where a student may suddenly
feel that they are not good at science.
It's important to look out for that,
because these students often just need
more encouragement, they might need more
repetition, and even some tutoring. But
often if they can get through this period
of time where the vocabulary and the
technical language of science is mastered,
and gapped to the point where you actually
have to think and critically analyze
observations, that's where Dyslexic
Students can really excel and do fantastic
work, even breakthrough work in research.
Organization is also a typical issue at
this age. That occurs for a number of
reasons. Sometimes the organizational
difficulties reflect inter-connected and
immersive thinking style, as a result, it
is hard to prioritize information and to
"chunk" it, categorize what they know,
and then put it in a sequence. I think in
another webinar what I might do is --
we can talk more about the executive
function organizational aspects of
Dyslexia. At the same time that we talk
about the challenges that occur at this
age, it's often really exciting to see
these students really start breaking out
of the pack in terms of their higher
order thinking. Often, students will
surprise their teachers with really
striking insights, different perspectives
on themes, or questions that are presented
in the classroom. Students can thrive in
project based learning and the arts,
verbal talents are often also noted at
this age. Some Dyslexic students actually
have a wonderful span, being able to keep
information in, and as a result they can
excel in things such as Drama or Debate,
because they can keep in long arguments
and what people have said, in their memory
banks, and then be able to analyze it and,
for instance, to counter arguments when
presenting in that kind of forum.
Leadership, also, is a very common talent
cluster among Dyslexic students. Often,
if a parents says, "I don't know what kind
of talent my student has, maybe there is
no specific talent or creative drive. If
we ask more questions, what we find out
is that these students, their strength may
be social. It's not that they prefer to be
in the science lab, or prefer to be doing
math equations, or physics; these students
really may seem to have no particular
special talents or gifts, but it's their
gift is actually social. What they really
are is making friends all over the school
with different ages, and that's going to
be a great talent in practically any
profession.
I also want to mention a bit about stealth
Dyslexics there. Stealth Dyslexics often
fly under the radar of
detection. Stealth Dyslexia in younger
children is usually seen in a setting of
gifted children who may be able to
compensate for some of their weaknesses
but, as Dyslexia evolves in older
students, often they can crack the code
of reading for comprehension purposes.
They can often read silently with good
comprehension, but their challenges come
out more with oral reading accuracy, and
with speed of processing, and with
writing. Organizational issues also
contribute to some of the writing
difficulties with Stealth Dyslexia. It's
another big topic, to talk about Stealth
Dyslexia, so maybe we can put that off
for another webinar if there is interest.
College and the Workplace: this is really
a new field, a lot...a new area.
There has been a lot of discussion about
the early years of Dyslexia, but, I think
it is going to be really an explosion of
understanding about Dyslexia in the
workplace in the coming decade. As much
in, for college, it is the quantity of
reading and writing that can be
particularly tough, we typically see
students in the first two years of college
have their greatest struggles. Sometimes
students will try a little bit of college,
really have trouble, and then have to
step out, try again, and then over the
course of some time, the brain matures
a little bit more, and then they can
actually balance schooling when they are
a little bit older. Another thing that we
see is that, although the first 2 years are
the toughest because there is a lot of
required reading, and a lot more rote
information...Dyslexic students, if they
can "push their way through" those first 2
years, they may really find the upper two
years quite a bit easier as they are used
to deep thinking, and analysis, and the
thinking part of college, where they work,
is not hard for most Dyslexic students.
It's really just the rote memorization
work that is required in the early years,
and the sheer quantity of books that need
to be read.
Time management: a big issue for many
students in the college years. Getting
through their major requirements, that's
often, as I said, the worst part. If you
can request reduced courseload, that's
very helpful for many students. Many
students also find they need to break
out their school schedule so that they
take some classes over summer.
In the workplace, the things that are the
most difficult for young Dyslexics are
tasks that require repetitive, and say for
instance, data entry, clerical tasks,
that's kind of like that fine detail that
is difficult for many Dyslexics. Filling
out forms, because information is not
contextual...questions that also rise,
should I disclose my Dyslexia in the
workplace? It can really be an important
issue for many people.
So at the same time there are really
significant challenges at the college
level and in the workplace, as said,
in higher education, and in careers, this
is often where Dyslexics shine because
they are fantastic problem solvers,
whether it's people problems, system
problems, or technical problems. Dyslexic
strengths often involve strategic
thinking, many Dyslexics are strong with
empathy and seem particularly good at team
building. Dynamic Reasoning, which is one
of the mind strengths, is something that
we also seem to see more often sort of
"turning on" in the college graduate
school or workplace years. Being able to
spot trends and predict what's going to
happen, which is important for so many
different cutting edge careers.
Entrepreneurship, Dyslexics, as many of
you many know, really excel as
entrepreneurs. They make up 35-40% of the
successful entrepreneurs here in the
United States. So, really highly
over-represented among successful
entrepreneurs compared to the general
population.
And what about older Dyslexic adults?
It's important to be aware if either you
or a friend or family member is suspected
to have Dyslexia,that...if you are over
the age of 40, the chances are, you were
never formally identified. Part of that
reason is because at that time the
federal legislation actually hadn't taken
place, so there was no pressure to
identify Dyslexia, it wasn't identified
in the school system yet. Really, the
legislation only took effect for people
who are now younger than the age of 40.
Many older Dyslexic adults got by--
succeeded--with personal strengths,
with people talents, as mentioned before,
strategic thinking and problems solving,
and they found that "real life" was easier
than school. When we polled our community
here at Dyslexic Advantage, many people
said that people supports were very
important, technology less so, but, that
soon will be changing. In answer to the
question, "Am I still Dyslexic?"---yes,
you are! It's a brain wiring difference.
Most Dylsexic adults are able to read and
understand, but their reading may be slow,
and writing and spelling even more
challenging than reading...that's what
most people tell us.
In answer to the question about the brain
science of Dyslexia, "Are Dyslexic brains
different?"---Yes, they are. Here is an
example from Manuel Casanova, a
neuroscientist here represented the
different brain volumes in Dyslexics versus
non-Dyslexics in terms of color. There
were larger right hemispheric brain
volumes among Dyslexics compared to
non-Dyslexics. Some of that....I think
this might be helpful in giving you an
idea of what the differences are. If you
process more information in the right
hemisphere, versus the left hemisphere,
this is an example from some really
fascinating split brain studies from
Sperry and Gazzaniga. These experiments
were not done on Dyslexic or non-Dyslexic
subjects...they were not done on Dyslexic
subjects. Instead,patients who were under
going a procedure which actually split the
hemispheres. So what it told us was what
do the respective hemispheres do when they
process language. For example, when one
of these split-brained patients were
flashed the word "knight" on a screen, if
it was flashed on the screen in a way that
the left hemisphere saw the word, then the
person said, "It says knight." But
interestingly, if it was flashed on the
screen so that the right hemisphere saw
the word, the person said this, " I have a
picture in my mind, but I can't say it.
Two fighters in a ring, ancient, using
uniforms and helmets on horses, trying
to knock each other off....knights?" What
this reflects is, although language is
really represented on both sides of the
brain, depending on whether you have more
left sided processing or right sided
processing, how that information is
organized, stored ,and expressed is very
different. On the left hemisphere, the
language centers tend to focus on
specific, exact information. In the right
hemisphere, it's more associational. So
there are these complex images and stories
associated with a word. As a result, when
students are say, in their middle or their
high school years, and you know they know
so much information. You've asked them to
write about it. Sometimes what you see is
really this kind of "complex perception"
that is really hard to put into words.
These are students, if you question them,
they know a lot about the topic, and yet
there are very few words they have written
on the page. Again, I think it's just a
great example that really can inform more
understanding of why writing is so
difficult for many students. There are
specific ways to actually encourage
elaboration. Translate pictures into words,
for instance, that particularly can work
well with many Dyslexic students.
So, I think we'll probably have a special
session on some of the brain research
studies in Dyslexia, because it's
fascinating and I think a lot of you would
have great discussion of some of the
observations. We really want to encourage
more sharing between Dyslexic populations
and the researchers who are trying to
study Dyslexia. I think it is very
important, and will help things all the
way around. A theory or a model that is
helpful to think about, what the balance
is in Dyslexia is this fine detail and big
picture aspect of Dyslexia. Dyslexia as
a trade-off is a trade-off for more big
picture thinking at the expense of fine
detail. Here we have a quote form Manuel
Casanova, he said, "Dyslexia is a pattern
of connectivity that favors longer
connections at the expense of shorter
ones, as measured by spaces between cell
minicolumns. This pattern of connectivity
may yield a greater capacity for abstract,
'visionary' thinking".
What Dr. Casanova has found is that if
white matter connections are measured in
Dyslexics versus non-Dyslexics, there are
clear differences. In fact, the pattern
between these connections looks like
there is kind of extremes, where, if there
is a normal distribution in the middle,
at one extreme favoring the fine detail
are autistic individuals. And at the other
end, favoring big picture, are Dyslexic
individuals. The picture over here on the
left, shows this trade-off between autism
and Dyslexia. Here, Dyslexia patterns
with these long projectios and pathways
in the frame, favor these top-down
cognitive style. What is the big picture?
What is the information we need to know.
What's the context. It tends to be more
holistic and gestault in terms of
processing, and good synthesizing that
comes as a result of this.
If you look at the fine detal/ big picture
trade-off, in other practical clinical
academic situations, the fine detail
picture are things like specific facts
where you are trying to master knowledge
in isolation. You are trying to learn
rules and procedures and information
that is supposed to be predictable,
orderly, and for instance, rote. At the
other end, the Dyslexic style is more big
picture. It's "gist". It's conceptual.
This kind of pattern works well for best
fit; looking at themes , patterns ,and
stories; information that is personal and
presented in context, and has associations
and relationships. You can imagine that
this kind of big picture style is so
helpful in many disciplines,
where you are trying to look at real-life
trends or real-life problems. You can also
imagine that in early elementary school,
where fine detail and rules and procedures
are being mastered, that's a particular
time that is difficult for many Dyslexics.
Going back to big picture: experiences,
kinesthetic learning, also contribute to
this big picture understanding of
information. Big Picture thinking is often
non-sequential, it can be messy because
you are really looking at the "best fit",
it doesn't have to be exact. Surprise and
Novelty are often really important for
Big Picture because it might cause you to
completely re-set your picture and your
perspective. This pattern is thought to be
more intuitive, rather than explicit.
If you look at this trade-off between Fine
Detail and Big Picture, the short
connection type processes in the brain
are things like Phonological
discrimination. What is the difference
between "ba" and "da"? Was it "bat" or
"dat"? Reading has a lot of fine detail
associated with it. Is there an "s" on the
end of the word or is there not? Again,
rote memory, information that could be
quickly processed and more automatic.
On the other side, the kinds of tasks that
are important for long connections in the
brain are things like analogical thinking;
how is this like that? Spatial reasoning,
which requires often different...how
would that object be rotated in space?
Engineers are very good at things like
that. Mental Simulation, again, not
exact but actually approximate. Big
picture processes are often slower, and
as mentioned, less automatic.
If you look at the fine detail challenges
in younger students, what are the sorts of
things that you'd see? -- Is that the
letter 'b' or 'd'? Did you say 'wold' or
'world'? Was 4 plus 4 eight, or seven, or
six? --These pieces of information are
very exact and specific short connection
type of tasks. Letter recognition, sound
discrimination, fact retrievals,
sequencing. What are the fine detail
challenges that older students face?
Things like homonyms-- was that 'hear',
or 'here'? Choosed or chose? You'll hear
students say, "I know what that means,
but I can't explain why, or I can't
pronounce it. Was that punctuation rules
that's a fine detail? Was it studies with
an apostrophe 's' or with an '-ies'?"
Examples of fine detail challenges have
been studied in brain systems. These are
from fMRI studies. A famous study by
John Gabrieli at Stanford, and what it
shows you is that in typically reading
children, when they were listening to a
rhyme, there is activation in these two
circles. When Dyslexic students were
given the same rhymes--this was an
interesting study because the students
didn't have to make a decision about
anything, they were just listening to
rhyming words in the scanner. You can
see, it is much less of a match betwe4en
those. But when students were remediated,
with a variety of methods--some was
auditory training, another was a
phonological method--that, improvement in
that sound discrimination could be seen on
an fMRI, and that correlated with the
tests that they gave the children. It's
important to note that these kinds of
tests are not useful for diagnosis, at
that point there is a lot of individual
variations. Mostly what can be gleaned,
at least at this point in time, come from
groups of students with controls, rather
than relying on a single person or so.
It's not as if you could go and have a
scan and find out that you are Dyslexic.
It's still a clinical diagnosis or
identification.
Another thing I wanted to mention here,
because we talked a bit about Stealth
Dyslexia. This is some fascinating work
from Fumiko Hoeft. What she found when
she studied Stealth Dyslexics was that
there was more brain grey matter seen in
Stealth Dyslexics, as well as more
activation in areas associated with
contextual learning. So, these are
students who had trouble with single word
reading, but were actually quite strong in
reading words within a story or a context.
The interesting part about this is that
the extra brain grey matter in these
context areas is consistent with the
strength that certainly we see among
Stealth Dyslexics, about contextual
learning, and being able to function well
in applied problem solving.
In fact, these slides were taken from
Dr. Hoefts presentation at our conference
on Dyslexia and Talent, she challenged
the concept of Dyslexia being deficit,
only, as she presented her work. I highly
recommend checking out the videos from our
conference on our You-tube channel,
youtube.com/dyslexicadvantage. Her talk
there showed that Stealth Dyslexics, as
much, have that contextual top-down
processing, being able to use brain
pathways in order to do decoding and
problem solving. She also presented and
showed us some work from Ken Pugh at the
Haskins Lab at Yale that showed that
there seems to be a trade off between
reading and visual spatial processing
ability. In fact, from that work, it looks
like the weaker the reading ability, the
stronger the visual spatial talent. Sort
of a fascinating result. It was building
on some previous work that showed that
Dyslexics outperformed non-Dyslexics in
terms of spatial rotation and problem
solving types of work. That might account
for why Dyslexics are over-represented in
fields such as engineering and
architecture. So what she put in her slide
is that these kinds of data challenge
accounts suggesting that Dyslexia is a
deficit. It is not, it's a trade off. You
can't just look at weaknesses associated
with Dyslexia, the whole picture is a
trade off. Some abilities are very strong,
or even above average, while other things
are the more traditional Dyslexia related
challenges with reading and writing.
I did want to mention some of the Dyslexic
strength literature here. Some examples,
Dyslexics, as I mentioned, outperform
non-Dyslexics on a variety of tasks. Here,
some in a previous study, if you do these
spatial puzzles here on the left, Dyslexics
are better than non-Dyslexics at these
things. On creative insight problems, it
shows that more problems were correctly
solved by the Dyslexic group compared to
the non-Dyslexic group. As mentioned,
Dylsexics are over-represented in schools
of art and engineering in surveys that
have been done, as well as surveys of
successful entrepreneurs.
These are some of the data that we've had
from our clinic. These are WISC scores,
here are various measurements on the
WIAT, for those of you who know about the
technical aspects of these tests. So, if
100 is the average, I think what I really
wanted to show you here is that there are
some areas that are below average, below
the line at 100 of things like working
memory, processing speed, sentence
repetition. Here are things like oral
reading accuracy, and math facts fluency.
At the same time, there's some
spectacularly high scores as well of
things like verbal reasoning ability,
oral word fluency, reading comprehension
can be very strong among some Stealth
Dyslexics, and things like that. Math
problem solving can also be in the average
range or very high amongst some clusters
of students. The main point getting across
here, Dyslexics are not a flat line. They
don't have even abilities. They are
lop-sided in this way, but it's also a
huge mistake to believe that Dyslexia is
weakness only. It's also accompanied by
some pretty impressive strengths. If we
are not looking for them, we need to be.
This just reinforces that the up-side
conceptual ability typically far exceeds
academic achievement. Often, what we've
seen when we spend time with these students
is that they really have extraordinary
conceptual ability, often 1grade, 2 grades,
sometimes even more above their grade.
It's something to be looked for because it
can be very frustrating, not only to have
to spend extra time with the basic rote
aspects of schooling, but to not be fed
for their advanced conceptual ability can
be a recipe for problems, because then
school really doesn't hold any excitement
or joy for them. It's not uncommon, for
instance,where we've had students who
were placed in gifted classrooms, but with
accommodations to support them for
reading and writing. That's why we like the
comprehensive testing--you have to look
for the strengths as well as the
challenges if you are going to be doing a
good assessment for Dyslexia.
So, maybe that's a good segway into the
next and final part of this talk, Dyslexic
talents in children. There are a wide
range of talents that we see among these
students, things like spatial problem
solving, this is a fantastic maze birthday
card that an 8 year old happened to bring
with him, and he showed me actually how it
could be solved. Often students really
excel or are precocious at hands on
projects. They may have unusual
perspectives. Here is an example of a
drawing of a bike from Michael Critchley's
work, a 9 year old was spontaneously
drawing a bike from an aerial view.
Spatial talents can also present in the
kinds of things they do. We've had a
number of soccer goalies, hockey goalies,
who are Dyslexic. Some of that may be just
pure athletic ability, but many cases, I
think it's spatial, and it's being able to
...a little bit of dynamic reasoning, to
see how people are moving, and to know
where the ball is going to go next. We've
also had a number of accomplished sailors
among our student group, we have parents,
also, who are very good at navigation,
sailing. This is another kind of complex
system where Dyslexics can excel at,
factoring in things like the weather,
wind, the current, and being able to know
where you are and where you'll be.
At the same time, the talents in Dyslexic
children aren't limited to just spatial
abilities. Some students are extremely
verbally gifted. They can be wonderful
storytellers, have advanced conceptual
reasoning as I mentioned, great verbal
reasoning...walking arguments, in fact.
Some of these students, you can see, they
are socially perceptive. We also see
students who have particularly strong
math and science abilities. One of the
questions we were asked in the live
webinar was a question about dynamic
reasoning, and when does that present?
Although that's typically an older
presenting gift among Dyslexic students,
we also can see that among students who
really thrive with for instance, video
gaming or imagining video gaming. This is
a drawing that one student brought in to
us about how he would plan a game, and
what you can see is it is a very complex
diagram. It had a lot of feedback loops,
--if this happened, this would go to
here--and students really love the
complexity of systems like this. Sometimes
gaming at this age may be the best way to
kind of analyze things like that. Older
students can get involved in things like
Game Theory, or Economics, but in the
early ages -- maybe video gaming or
imaginary worlds or fantasy may satisfy
that craving for complexity. Dyslexic
students we often find, are very
metacognitive. There is a study of college
students that found Dyslexic students had
stronger metacognitive abilities than
non-Dyslexic students, maybe because they
had a harder time with rote memory. They
are often extremely analytical. When we
did a survey at Dyslexic Advantage dot
com, I think the analytical strength was
among the highest that people reported
of their talents that they seemed to use
commonly in their workplace and their
jobs.
When we surveyed the talents in our
parents that we saw for the students in
our clinic, we had probably an unusual
cluster of parent careers, because we
are near Microsoft and Boeing, but, 43%
of the parents from out clinic were in
engineering, computers, science, or
economics. Twenty-five percent were in
business, upper management, or sales.
Other occupations included pilot,coaches,
counselors, and veterinarians. There were
strengths that build on personal
communication, empathy, but also things
like problem solving and spatial
visualization and reasoning. This is just
a little pie chart looking at the
different kinds of careers that we found
when we polled individuals from our
community.
Okay, this brings me to Dyslexic Mind
Strengths and I'll come into a close here.
MIND is an acronym that we use that
stands for Material Reasoning,
Interconnected Reasoning, Narrative
Reasoning, and Dynamic Reasoning. These
are brain-based mechanisms that contribute
to Dyslexic strengths.
Material Reasoning is an ability to
reason about the physical characteristics
of objects in a material universe, largely
spatial reasoning ability. Material
reasoners are often able to, for instance,
figure out how things work, gears,
pulleys, for example. This is a drawing
from a great little builder in our clinic.
At 6 years old, he was already drawing
ships in cross-section from an aerial
view. This child's understanding of what
a boat is certainly better than a standard
six year old who doesn't have that strong
physical knowledge of what things are.
The "I" stands for Interconnected
Reasoning, and that's an ability to spot
connections or relationships between
different objects, concepts, or points
of view. An ability to connect diverse
perspectives, or see things from different
points of view can be used in all kinds of
situations, from things like the work
place, working in businesses,
corporations, to writing novels, or...in
the military, being able to see a
battlefield from different perspectives.
This is really an incredible strength, but
it can also be a challenge when students
are younger, and they have trouble picking
one, or narrowing what they want to say
in a paper. Interconnected Reasoning
allows individuals to unite information,
to assume a global or "big picture"
perspective, and to also determine large
scale features like gist -- what's the
"gist" of the situation, or context.
N stands for Narrative Reasoning, and
that's an ability to create stories by
connecting a series of mental scenes from
past personal experience, as well as a
tendency to use stories to recall the
past, understand the present, and imagine
the future. We have a lot of gifted
storytellers in our clinic. We've seen
that in adults with Dyslexia that
storytelling ability can be great for all
kinds of occupations, not just writing,
but also communicating a vision in a
workplace as a business leader or, for
instance, in the courtroom with a lawyer,
who can communicate and really connect
to the jury. So, Narrative Reasoning is
really a fascinating strength associated
with Dyslexia. Many students are able to
use stories to really boost their memory
for information in the classroom.
Which brings us to the last Mind Strength,
Dynamic Reasoning. That's an ability to
recombine the elements of the past to
predict or simulate future outcomes.
Dynamic Reasoning really builds on
pattern recognition. It often involves
personal rather than abstract memory.
It can be great for highly changeable or
ambiguous situations, where there is
incomplete knowledge. Cutting edge fields,
finance...if suddenly you have a crash of
a stock market, what is going to happen
next? It's not ever happened before like
this...A lot of Dyslexic dynamic reasoners
really excel in times like this because
they are trend spotters, pattern people,
they look at best fit, and so, it doesn't
matter if it hasn't happened before, they
will make a good prediction for the
future. As mentioned, Dynamic Reasoning
uses these "best fit" cognitive processes
rather than rule-based, deductive, or
formulaic thinking. Rather , Dynamic
Reasoners used cases and examples. They
like to connect the dots in order to
predict what is going to happen next.
Particularly good for areas that are
completely new, as mentioned, new
domains of knowledge... A very famous
highly successful Dyslexic researchers in
all kinds of fields, and inventors, also
in business and finance, as mentioned.
I just want to talk a bit--I'm just about
to close--about some of the trade-offs
that happen in memory, based on the
Dyslexic processing style. As mentioned,
rote memory is a relative weakness for
many Dyslexics. It's non-contextual, it's
generalized (generic), like a dictionary
definition. The strength side of memory
for many Dyslexics is personal memory,
it's like an episode, scene-based. It
occurs at a specific time and place, and
often uses cases and examples with
connection of these, in order to create a
big picture.
Why Dyslexic Strengths matter? There has
been a lot of controversy and discussion
about whether it's important to address
strengths associated with Dyslexic
students. We think it is absolutely
essential. This is another student in
our clinic. This is percentile, now, and
the average range is at the 50 percentile
mark. If a student has this kind of oral
expression, listening comprehension, but
down here visual matching, or math facts,
fluency; looking at the whole picture is
really essential for understanding the
pressure points that a student is feelilng
in school. How to optimize and have
challenge in the areas where they are
actually thriving at, but also support and
reasonable expectations for their
weaknesses. Understanding, for instance,
visual matching is a sub-test which can
be associated with these so-called
"careless mistakes" that happen with
mathematics. There is often a little
drift that can occur for many Dyslexics.
They'll look at numbers, then they'll look
again, and the numbers may switch place.
They are called careless mistakes, but
they aren't really careless, they are
perceptual mistakes. Understanding this
extra difficulty, rather than give them
more and more rote problems to solve, it's
good to really see the whole pictureof
things, and be able to assign fewer
problems. Also, projects that will appeal
to the areas of their strength, and the
modes that they learn fast in.
Dyslexics often have extreme discrepancies
between their different cognitive
abilities. Failure to recognize that can
really take a toll on their esteem and
emotional health. It's very important,
what the environment is, as I mentioned,
what the expectations should be. On the
positive side, recognizing student's
strengths, really have powerful effects
on these students' futures. We've had so
many students come back to us, and tell
us, just understanding their situation,
seeing what they were good at, getting
the whole picture of what they were facing
was very empowering, very encouraging.
And what we've talked to highly
accomplished individuals as adults, they
often said, "Having my mom or dad really
believe in me, understand me, or a teacher
who encouraged me, recognized that my
ideas were really good, really helped
carry me through a difficult time, and a
time I really needed to put in a lot of
extra work compared to my peers."
I wanted to share this brain study. It is
really fascinating. In this test, subjects
were asked to silently generate the verb
associated with a noun. For example, if
they were given the example of a boat,
what would you expect the boat to do?
It would be sailing, Just thinking of
sailing, and not even saying anything, the
red brain, these are cross-sections from
the base of the brain, up to the top. The
red parts are all the different parts of
the brain that
non-Dyslexics used when they were thinking
of that. The blue parts were all the parts
where Dyslexics subjects were using, so
completely different areas of
the brain to process things. Just
understanding how different Dyslexic
processing is from non-Dyslexics, really
can help us understand why there can be
a disconnect in the classroom, why many
Dyslexics are not well understood, and
why we need to work and do more research,
and more policies that improve our
understanding of how to optimize work
places and classrooms for Dyslexic
people.
What next? Dyslexic [Advantage] is now a
501c3 organization. We hope that you will
watch and share videos from the conference
conference. This is the youtube url--
youtube.com/dyslexicadvantage . We hope
you really consider making a donation to
the Webinar series, we'd like to continue
to do these, and be able to create a
library that can help more individuals.
The focus of our group is to look at
reframing Dyslexia. Too often right now,
Dyslexia is thought to be a stigma, and
many people believe that Dyslexics are
low potential people. For that reason, we
need to speak out more. A lot of people
need to make steps to educate their peers,
and friend and family members about the
high potential associated with Dyslexia,
and the talent side. Our goal is to
identify and help more students and
adults to share more of the research and
applications of strength based focus, so
that we can help our students in
classrooms, and more employees and
workplaces. Education, of course, extends
to parents, teachers, and non-Dyslexics,
and what we'd like to do, is improve
awareness all the way around about the
talent side of Dyslexia, and help build
our community, so it's better
opportunities for everyone. So, thank
you very much for joining us, and please
get in touch with us so if we can help
more, if you've got ideas for future
webinars, or if we can answer some
questions. Thank you!