Hey everyone! Have you ever wondered if you have dyslexia? Or maybe you’ve always had trouble reading and didn’t know why? If so, today’s quiz might help. Let us first try to analyze this topic and consider what dyslexia is.
Dyslexia, also known as reading disorder, is characterized by reading below the expected level for their age. Different people are affected to different degrees. Problems may include difficulties in spelling words, reading quickly, writing words, “sounding out” words in the head, pronouncing words when reading aloud, and understanding what one reads. Often these difficulties are first noticed at school. When someone who previously could read loses their ability, it is known as alexia. The difficulties are involuntary, and people with this disorder have a normal desire to learn. People with dyslexia have higher rates of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), developmental language disorders, and difficulties with numbers.
Dyslexia is believed to be caused by the interaction of genetic and environmental factors. Some cases run in families. Dyslexia that develops due to a traumatic brain injury, stroke, or dementia is called “acquired dyslexia”. The underlying mechanisms of dyslexia result from differences within the brain’s language processing. Dyslexia is diagnosed through a series of tests of memory, vision, spelling, and reading skills. Dyslexia is separate from reading difficulties caused by hearing or vision problems or by insufficient teaching or opportunity to learn.
Treatment involves adjusting teaching methods to meet the person’s needs. While not curing the underlying problem, it may decrease the degree or impact of symptoms. Treatments targeting vision are not effective. Dyslexia is the most common learning disability and occurs in all areas of the world. It affects 3–7% of the population. However, up to 20% of the general population may have some symptoms. While dyslexia is more often diagnosed in boys, this is partly explained by a self-fulfilling ‘referral bias’ among teachers and professionals. It has even been suggested that the condition affects men and women equally. Some believe that dyslexia is best considered as a different way of learning, with both benefits and downsides.
In early childhood, symptoms that correlate with a later diagnosis of dyslexia include delayed onset of speech and a lack of phonological awareness. A common myth closely associates dyslexia with mirror writing and reading letters or words backward. These behaviors are seen in many children as they learn to read and write and are not considered to be defining characteristics of dyslexia.
School-age children with dyslexia may exhibit signs of difficulty in identifying or generating rhyming words or counting the number of syllables in words–both of which depend on phonological awareness. They may also show difficulty in segmenting words into individual sounds (such as sounding out the three sounds of k, a, and t in cat) or may struggle to blend sounds, indicating reduced phonemic awareness. Difficulties with word retrieval or naming things are also associated with dyslexia. People with dyslexia are commonly poor spellers, a feature sometimes called dysorthographia or dysgraphia, which depends on the skill of orthographic coding. Problems persist into adolescence and adulthood and may include difficulties with summarizing stories, memorization, reading aloud, or learning foreign languages. Adults with dyslexia can often read with good comprehension, though they tend to read more slowly than others without a learning difficulty and perform worse in spelling tests or when reading nonsense words–a measure of phonological awareness.
Through the use of compensation strategies, therapy, and educational support, individuals with dyslexia can learn to read and write. There are techniques and technical aids that help to manage or conceal symptoms of the disorder. Reducing stress and anxiety can sometimes improve written comprehension. For dyslexia intervention with alphabet-writing systems, the fundamental aim is to increase a child’s awareness of correspondences between letters and sounds and to relate these to reading and spelling by teaching how sounds blend into words. Reinforced collateral training focused on reading and spelling may yield longer-lasting gains than oral phonological training alone. Early intervention can be successful in reducing reading failure.
Research does not suggest that specially-tailored fonts help with reading. Children with dyslexia read text set in a regular font such as Times New Roman and Arial just as quickly, and they show a preference for regular fonts over specially-tailored fonts. Some research has pointed to increased letter-spacing being beneficial. There is currently no evidence showing that music education significantly improves the reading skills of adolescents with dyslexia.
Most dyslexia research relates to alphabetic writing systems, and especially to European languages. However, substantial research is also available regarding people with dyslexia who speak Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, or other languages. The outward expression of individuals, with reading disabilities and regular poor readers, is the same in some respects.
Do you have dyslexia? Today’s quiz can help you find the answer to this question. Answer twenty questions and see for yourself. Remember that this test is not a diagnosis. We encourage you to consult a specialist.
