Dyslexia Signs and Symptoms
from the brain training experts at LearningRx
The brain can change, grow and improve at any age, so it’s never too late to try to reduce or eliminate the symptoms of dyslexia. Dyslexia simply means “poor with words or trouble with reading” and up to 20 percent of our population struggles with it.
Many people mistakenly associate dyslexia with reversing letters or seeing words backwards, so many dyslexic students go unidentified and untreated. Dyslexia symptoms can be difficult to recognize before a child enters school, but recognizing early signs can make it easier.
Compared to his peers a toddler or preschooler with dyslexia may:
- Talk later than average
- Mix up sounds in words: cimmanon for cinnamon, bugs-sketti for spaghetti, gubble-bum for bubble-gum
- Be slow to add new words to vocabulary
- Have trouble rhyming
- Struggle to remember words or names
- Have difficulty learning colors, the alphabet and numbers
- Be unable to follow multi-step directions
- Have poor fine-motor skills
When children reach school age, the signs and symptoms of dyslexia become more obvious as they try to learn to read. In elementary school and beyond, signs of dyslexia that involve reading include:
- Poor understanding of the connection between letters and sounds
- Confusing small words like at and to, does and goes, said and and
- Poor spelling
- Reversing letters like b and d and p and q
- Reversing words like was and saw, no and on, top and pot
- Substituting similar words like house for home
- Difficulty reading single words in isolation
- Substituting words with similar meanings but different sounds like dog for puppy
- An inability to sound out the pronunciation of an unfamiliar word
- Reading at a level well below the expected age level
- Comprehension problems
- Slow reading
- Little reading for pleasure
- Little imagination in writing
- Difficulty finishing writing assignments
- Avoidance of reading aloud
Dyslexia also comes with signs and symptoms that are not strictly reading related, like:
- Difficulty processing and following multi-step instructions
- Confusing math signs like plus and minus
- Memory problems
- Difficulty planning
- Trouble learning to tell time
- Difficulty retelling or summarizing a story
- Trouble understanding jokes
- Excessive homework that takes too long to complete
- Trouble learning a foreign language
- Struggles with math word problems
- Problems following if/then analogies
- Inability to process multi-step directions
- Trouble discerning left and right
- Needing instructions repeated
- Poor sense of direction
- Bad map reading skills
- Slow to understand and respond to questions
The root cause of dyslexia is most often weak cognitive skills. Cognitive skills are the mental tools we all use to read, think, learn, remember, reason and pay attention. In the largest study of its kind, the National Institutes of Health determined that 88 percent of all learning to read problems were caused by a weakness in one specific cognitive skill: phonemic awareness, which is the ability hear, blend, unglue and manipulate sounds in a word.
Cognitive skills testing generally confirms that people with dyslexia also have weaknesses in working memory, executive function, and attention. Intense, one-on-one, personalized brain training is one of the best treatments for dyslexia, because it can dramatically strengthen those weak skills. The struggles subside, reading becomes fast and easy, and often the dyslexia label no longer fits.
A recent study of LearningRx results shows students who underwent six months of reading-focused brain training gained an average of 2.9 years in reading ability – even those students who had previously been diagnosed with dyslexia. The study, called the 2011 Report of LearningRx Training Results, also shows that LearningRx graduates who completed a six-month brain training program saw an average IQ increase of 20 points.
If someone in your family has signs of dyslexia, get the answers you need and schedule a cognitive skills assessment today.
