My daughter is in third grade and is really struggling with reading. She also has trouble writing and often writes letters facing the wrong way. I’m starting to read up on dyslexia and visual processing issues. It seems like a lot of the symptoms overlap. How can parents (and doctors) tell the difference?
Reading does involve vision. But it involves a lot of more than that.
To answer your question, the biggest difference is that children with dyslexia have trouble processing language rather than visual information. They may enjoy drawing pictures, playing video games and doing other things that involve interpreting what the eyes see. Children with dyslexia struggle with connecting the letters they see to the sounds that are associated with those letters.
Visual processing issues, on the other hand, can affect children during a variety of visual activities. It may be hard for some kids with visual processing issues to sit through a movie or to match socks out of a laundry basket.
When identifying and treating dyslexia, the focus is on language. Specifically, reading skills rely on an awareness of the smallest sound units in words. These units are called phonemes. For example, back and pack each have three phonemes (and share two of the three). Struggling readers may need extra practice picking up on how words like back and pack are similar and how they’re different.
Phonemic awareness is essential for beginning readers. It is what allows them to start matching sound units (phonemes) to their written counterparts (graphemes).
Over time, readers train their brains to automatically recognize words they see frequently. But it’s hard to advance to this stage if you have trouble connecting letters to sounds.
You mentioned that your daughter often writes letters facing the wrong way. All beginning readers reverse or rotate letters such as p, q, d and b. This reflects the brain’s ability to recognize the same object from different angles. (Learn more about why kids reverse letters and when it could be a concern.)
This flexibility in interpreting visual information plays an important role in our daily lives. For example, it lets your brain know you’re looking at a chair, whether it’s facing to the left or to the right, or whether it’s upright or knocked over.
But when a child is learning to read, her brain has to override these flexible tendencies. As kids become more experienced readers, they start to appreciate each letter as a separate entity.
Children with dyslexia stand out from their peers because they keep using backward letters in their reading and writing. But they do this because they lack reading experience. It’s not the cause of their dyslexia.
Researchers have been studying dyslexia for over a century. We know a lot about it. Visual processing issues not as well understood.
Some children struggle with visual representation of information. Some kids have poor visual-spatial processing. Issues with visual processing may interfere with reading. For example, poor mental imagery might make it hard to picture a word in “your mind’s eye.”
However, the definition of dyslexia that doctors use does not include visual processing issues, which aren’t thought to be a common cause of dyslexia. It’s also important to note that treatments for vision problems, such as eye exercises or behavioral vision therapy, are not considered helpful for dyslexia.
A comprehensive evaluation can give you a thorough understanding of your daughter’s reading issues. Knowing her strengths and weaknesses can guide you to strategies and supports that will help her become a skilled and confident reader.
Article Provided By Guinevere Eden