Liz Ditz, who dables in lots of interests (one of which is Learning Disabilities, thank goodness), picked up a story about the costs of dyslexia to society, at least in the form of government services. You can read her treatment of the topic on her blog at this link.
Archive for September, 2005
Over on I Speak of Dreams, Liz Ditz covered a story about a boy in Hawai’i whose parents persisted in seeking and got services for him. From the story, it appears that the boy’s reading problems have been remedied and his spelling is improving, at least according to a private tutor’s assessment. (Sadly, someone—the tutor?—fed the reporter the usual bologna about reversals.)
The coverage by Ms. Ditz emphasizes the important idea that the L in LD does not stand for “lazy.”
Link to Ms. Ditz’s coverage of the story.
According to an organization that describes itself as Citizens Commission on Human Rights (yes, it omits the possessive apostrophe) but that is a product of the Church of Scientology, psychiatrists misrepresent and mistreat dyslexia. I have reservations about psychiatry that is founded on intrapsychic bologna, but the take that the scientologist have seems askew to me.
Unable to find a real cause for dyslexia, psychiatrists claimed it was a “specific reading disorder,” characterized by distortion or substitution of words, omissions in oral and silent reading and “errors in comprehension.” Pediatric neurologist Fred Baughman Jr., says, accepting dyslexia as a brain-based problem “is doing incredible damage to these individuals and to the country.”
The problem is that there’s ample evidence of differences between the brain functions of individuals who have dyslexia and those who read normally. For a general introduction, see Sally Shaywitz’s fine book, Overcoming Dyslexia. (There’s also evidence that those differences can be changed, but that’s content for another post.)
This description is followed by a potpourri of causes, including dysteachia. So, they get it only partially right. Ah well….As Liz Ditz notes in her analysis of another site’s reference to this, there are lots of problems with scientology.
Link to the CCHR entry. (Thanks to Liz, I Speak of Dreams, for the starting place!)
Vicari and colleagues assessed whether ~11-1/2-year-old Italian children identified as having dyslexia (using a discrepancy diagnosis) differed from their normal reading agemates on two tasks selected to tap different types of learning but free from reading. Here’re my notes from a first reading of the study.
On a serial-reaction-time task, children pressed the one of four keys that corresponded to a lit square in an array of four squares on a computer display; on some sets of trials the order of squares lit was essentially random but on other sets of trials, the squares were lit in a sequence. The dyslexic children responded more slowly that their non-disabled peers overall and made more errors; more importantly, they showed little or no improvement over time when the pattern was predictable, but there was minimal difference when the pattern was random.
On a mirror-drawing task, the children draw a star, staying within margins defining the outline of the star; however, an apparatus made it possible for them to see the results of their drawing in an upside-down image only. They drew as many stars as they could within 10-minute sessions and repeated the task four times spread over two days. On average, the dyslexic group drew fewer segments correctly and made more errors (bumps into the walls), especially on the second day, but they didn’t make proportionally more errors.
This study is important because it shows differences between the groups on learning tasks that are relatively free from the language skills that undergird reading. The children with dyslexia didn’t learn the patterns as readily as their agemates and didn’t learn to modify their drawing over time as well as those peers. This study is helpful in revealing differences between normal and poor readers in the acquisition of sequential skills, but it can perforce only tell part of the story, because a critical foundation for reading is mastery of the alphabetic principal, a language competency. However, these results do not refute the position that children with dyslexia (based on discrepancy) do not differ in important ways from those who have reading problems but do not have discrepancies between their ability and achievement; that question was not tested here.
Vicari, S., Finzi, A., Menghini, D, Marotta, L., Baldi, S., & Petrosini, L. (2005). Do children with developmental dyslexia have an implicit learning deficit? Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry 76, 1392-1397.
Link to the abstract for the Vicari et al. study.
Over at About.com—which we all know is about making $$: tiny bits of questionable content about high-traffic topics with huge amounts of advertising—where Sue Watson provides bogus advice about special education, I found a pediatrics entry about Learning Disabilities that features a screening quiz for parents. The viewer gets to answer “yes” or “no” to a string of questions. The stem for each question is the same and, because each question causes a page refresh, the viewer gets to see the full display of advertisements surrounding each question repeatedly. Here’s the stem and the questions:
Does your elementary school aged child…
- have trouble learning the alphabet, rhyming words, or connecting letters to their sounds?
- make many mistakes when reading aloud, and repeat and pause often?
- not understand what he or she reads?
- have real trouble with spelling?
- have very messy handwriting or hold a pencil awkwardly?
- struggle to express ideas in writing?
- learn language late and have a limited vocabulary?
- have trouble remembering the sounds that letters make or hearing slight differences between words?
- have trouble understanding jokes, comic strips, and sarcasm?
- have trouble following directions?
- mispronounce words or use a wrong word that sounds similar?
- have trouble organizing what he or she wants to say or not be able to think of
- the word he or she needs for writing or conversation?
- not follow the social rules of conversation, such as taking turns, and may stand too close to the listener?
- confuse math symbols and misread numbers?
- have trouble retelling a story in order (what happened first, second, third)?
- not know where to begin a task or how to go on from there?
The “yes” button is always already selected. So, I went with the default and (guess what!) my answer indicate a Learning Disability. I also got some text with general descriptions and links to—no suprise here—more About.com resources. Most of them were provided by Vincent Iannelli, MD, who’s the site’s “guide,” and they basically reprint notes from other sources (e.g., NICHD).
I wonder what would happen if one always responded “no.” Also, I wonder where the cut-point between “does” and “doesn’t” falls, how many positive answers are required before the answer is, “Yes, probably does have LD.” If anyone else completes the quiz and gets additional data, please report them here. Which numbers did you mark as “yes” and which as “no?”
Link to the quiz site.
Highlands School is a private provider serving 38 students with learning and behavior problems. Cassandra Fortin of the Baltimore (MD, US) Sun focused on Highlands in a story, covering the annual tuition ($20K), a building campaign, tidbits about teaching techniques and kids’ successes, and sundry other matters. There is no mention of local education agencies paying for students to attend. From the story, it’s not possible to assess the quality of the programming.
Link to Ms Fortin’s story.
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