Talk:Dyslexia
General
"Dyslexics are usually above normal intelligence because they have to be able to cope in a world where the other 80-85% of the population is oriented naturally. "
Sorry but I have never heard this before and I frankly am very reluctant to believe it. Where are all the studies showing it?
- Also, the statement about the dyslexic being a "three dimensional thinker", while it may have some basis in truth, seems far more reductive and simplistic than the rest of the article. Not being an expert, though, I don't know how to qualify it properly... --Matt McIrvin 14:35, 21 May 2005 (UTC)
- Some have disagreed with these findings, however, and believe that while dyslexia may sometimes be inborn it is often attributable to lack of phonics training when learning to read and the preponderance of the whole language system.
I don't know a lot about this issue, but this sentence looks like POV to me. There might be people who say dyslexia is often caused by "a lack of whole language training." --Szyslak 09:29, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- "Although many biographers claim to have disproved that Einstein was dyslexic, their arguments are based on the premise that because he actually excelled in school, he could therefore not have had a learning disability. "
Didn't Einstein perform poorly in school?
- The article on Einstein talks about this. He seems to have been regarded as having some sort of deficit early on, and got in some trouble with liberal-arts subjects later. But there's also a legend that he received poor grades in mathematics which is a result of biographers' confusion over a change in the grading system; he was actually an excellent math student. I'd say the jury is still out on whether this indicates any sort of diagnosable learning disability. --Matt McIrvin 14:26, 21 May 2005 (UTC)
Sometimes, in a hurry, we misread things.
e.g: We misread Breakfest as Breakfast with a preconcieved notion that it is breakfast.
what is this called ??
-kaysov
Time and again some portions of my articles have been removed as "copyrighted"!!! Please do not do that again: I indeed pasted it ready-made; however, I pasted it from my own article (http://www.supermemo.com/articles/genius.htm). Please feel free to expand upon this text, but I would appreciate if you would leave this note intact. One reason is that I would not like anyone ever think that I steal material from Wikipedia to write my own articles! I just thought this would be a nice contribution. -- Piotr Wozniak
As a dyslexic, I see my dyslexia as a problem with symetry ie b/d/g/p/q or do/ob/op/go or multiples thereof. I also have left/right dyslexia where i get my directions backwards all the time. -- Mike Dill
If you have trouble with b, d, p, and q, think of how dyslexics feel about the Tengwar of Feanor! --Damian Yerrick
the joke of the dyslexic agnostic - didn't know if he should believe in dog.
...or the dyslexic devil-worshipper who sold his soul to Santa...
Inborn
Article states conclusively that dyslexia is inborn, implying this is true 100% of the time. Can we really state that definitively? Many people believe it is often (or even always!) attributable to use of the look-say (whole language or whole word) method of teaching children to read instead of phonics.
Reworded to mention that people disagree, but I think it still needs to have the big bold faced sentence that pronounces the "truth" that dyslexia is inborn NPOVed. Jdavidb 18:45, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Doyle Saylor djsaylor@mindspring.com This discussion of dyslexia has some deficits.
First, This article does not clearly come out and say that dyslexia can affect hearing and touch but that is an accepted scientific view of dyslexia. While citing Gazzaniga I wonder why the writer did not also read Margaret Livingstone?
Secondly, this article ignores in visual dyslexia the common difficulty with seeing depth for dyslexics. Hence the larger issue of the magno-cellular pathway and what it does. Therefore the connection to damage arising in Alzheimers wherein the affected person gets lost because they are motion blind is not connected to the same issue that affects dyslexics.
Thirdly, Dyslexics have trouble with web pages that have flash elements in them (animated graphics). A focus strictly on reading therefore can't pick up the disability issues that also affect dyslexics.
Fourth, There is no sense in this paper why some dyslexics seem so bright. This might have been explored by looking at primate evolution and the rise of the color seeing channel in vision (parvo-nuclear). The relative difference between seeing motion and seeing stationary surfaces seems to correspond to what intelligence is usually ascribed to. Correlations to experiments with blind people whose cortex seems to have re-mapped from visual centers to touch centers is highly suggestive of the intelligence factors in Dyslexics.
Fifth, In referring to script issues the author ignores Japanese scripts (Kanji) that are much easier for dyslexics to absorb. All scripts to some extent reproduce sounds, but some scripts are more easily seen than others. Why is this?
Sixth, In describing the areas of the brain where visual processing occurs the sense of visual pathways is much more muddled than need be. A description of the motion sensing areas and the paths from there to the parietal lobe and temporal lobe would make more sense than the current allusions. thanks, Doyle
To Doyle: your comments are insightful and inspiring, but where are your edits to the main article? :-)
Version at the time of writing mentions dyscalculia specifically as being tied to difficulty with reading analog clocks, not because of the numerals but because of the "rotational positioning" involved. I couldn't find anything to corroborate this, and suspect that this isn't part of dyscalculia. Basically, Doyle is right: this article could use some good overhauling by someones knowing their stuffs, pardon me grammar.
Incidentally, why are all these words so friggin' hard to spell? You can't tell me that it's not deliberate, man. Stupid G(r)eeks.
See "Chinese dyslexics have problems of their own" http://www.mirabilis.ca/archives/002117.html http://www.nature.com/news/2004/040830/full/040830-5.html but see response: http://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0409&L=anthro-l&F=&S=&P=12758
Dyslexia Parents Resource http://dyslexia-parent.com/
"Dyslexia- A Gift?" by Lillian Jones http://www.bayshoreeducational.com/dyslexia.html
- That page is 404'd now, but "The Gift of Dyslexia" is a book by Ron Davis, [1], founder of Davis Dyslexia, owner of dyslexia.com, and somebody probably worth an article. Ojw 22:44, 21 July 2005 (UTC) (warning: paranoid US group with legal support)
" Before the invention of written language, dyslexia didn't exist. People with the
gift of dyslexia were probably the custodians of oral history because of their
excellent ability to memorize and transmit the spoken word." http://www.mlode.com/~ra/ra8/dyslexia.htm
???
http://www.dyslexiacure.com/
Another possible external link: Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic -http://www.rfbd.org/
"5-15% of the population can be diagnosed as suffering from various degrees of dyslexia."
The population of what? US? English-speaking countries? The world?
- I don't know, but I've read that Japan has a much lower perccentage. Maybe in Spain as well where the language is much more phonetic.
A comment
I'm posting this here because I don't know where else to post it. But I have just found an article on Wikipedia where one user is belittling another because he's says that he is dyslexic. My son is dyslexic and I just can't understand how an adult could be so cruel. Jrossman 02:34, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)
Einstein discussion
I've removed a large part of the "is he/is he not" discussion about Albert Einstein being dyslexic. It doesn't fit into this article and, while it may contain relevant information, could not easily be worked into his article. If someone can rework it somewhere then that would be good. violet/riga (t) 17:43, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Three dimensional thinkers?
The dyslexic is a three dimensional thinker.
I encountered this sentence in the article, and it immediately struck me as dubious. I was curious about the basis for this statement, being that it was completely new to me, and I googled dyslexia "three dimensional". The first link that came up where three dimensional refered to a type of thinking or mental ability was this one: [2]. According to this article, although there is a popular belief that dyslexia is accompanied by a compensatory strength in spatial ability, scientific evidence shows otherwise. Granted, this is only one study (I could probably find more) but it is enough that I feel justified in asking for some reference on this statement, and if none can be produced this statement (or the entire paragraph) should be scratched. Now perhaps the reference is there, somewhere among the several references at the bottom of the article. I'm not the only person who finds parts of this article questionable (see comments above on the claim that dyslexics are higher than average intelligence) and without good citations, even if the info is good and backed by science, in the context of this article it sounds like feel-good, armchair cognitive psychology. At least that's what it seems like to me; I can't speak for the others. CyborgTosser (Only half the battle) 07:32, 21 May 2005 (UTC)
theory of dyslexia as an inner ear disorder
Hey, I'd like someone qualified to assess the following site, which cites clinical studies demonstrating Dyslexia to be a disorder of the inner-ear, that can be greatly improved by inner-ear medicines designed to improve motion-sickness. If there are no objections, I'll add a line or two about this research in the article (as a theory, of course, not as fact).
The idea is that inner ear problems could cause the focusing and eye-movement problems dyslexics are known for, as well as a difficulty with "stabilizing" letters on a page since the inner ear controls this sort of coordination. Many other dyslexic symptoms can be similarly explained as the product of inner ear abnormalities.
Journal abstract (for the brave)
Please remove the list of celebrities
Amorrow says: I think that the list of celebrities should be reduced to a very small number, if any. 15% of human population says it all. If studies has shown that dyslexia is more prevelant in certain groups, then fine.
Why are all these celebrities listed? Are you just trying to make people who feel they have dyslexia feel better about some perception that they have not accomplished much in their lives? If you are, then you are not being objective. Instead, you are being sucked into problems of people who suffer from dyxlexia, both related and unrelated to their dyslexia. Wikipedia is not here to glamourize dyxlexia. Wikipedia is here to help others understand this specific diagnosis and describe its context in the human population.
The same goes for anything else that makes dyslexics "special" unless it has been published in a peer-reviewed journal. Shove it somewher else and get it out of this entry. You can add all of the "Dyslexia Support Group" links you want at the bottom of the page.
One other comment: It is inappropriate to "suspect" a living person, even if they are a celebrity, of having dyslexia. If they are still alive, it should be considered their private medical data until they have released the information to the public.
Direction difficulty
Am I correct in believing that difficulty with directions is common in dyslexics? My father is a dyslexic, and he has no sense of left vs. right, etc. Would this count as a form of dyslexia, is this just a part of dyslexia, is this a different disorder altoghether, or am I just not looking close enough at the article? Idekii 02:56, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
- I am not sure if it is true for all dyslexia sufferurs, but I myself do have a problem telling left from right. --Admiral Roo 13:20, September 2, 2005 (UTC)
Quality of this article
The majority of the article as it stands is extremely POV with a large amount of unsubstatiated conjecture and downright untruths about dyslexia. It seems to suggest that being dyslexic is actually quite an attractive condition, by attributing it to all kinds of virtues such as high IQ, ability at art/engineering/etc, verbal skill and so on.
The section on Common Characteristics is particularly misleading, whilst there is no mention at all of the recent controversy surrounding the diagnosis of dislexia in the first place--Fergie 12:09, 2 September 2005 (UTC)