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Great Minds Think Differently (Psychology)
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Mick Harper
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As you know we have discussed at length elsewhere the fact that dyslexia and allied conditions are very well-represented among AEL members and their families.

There was a programme on telly a while back about dyslexia which was completely fascinating -- though not for the reasons the programme-makers thought. "There's no such thing as dyslexia: it's just laziness" was how it was trailed and how it was portrayed for the first twenty minutes. But then it critically acknowledged that "learning to read" is a very low-order skill i.e. anyone not actually severely sub-normal can learn to do it without difficulty.

The clear implication of this, which the programme very reluctantly acknowledged, was that there is a condition called dyslexia and it does affect a proportion of the population and that basically anybody that has reading difficulties suffers from the condition.

It then went on to say some useful things. For instance, it definitely pays dyslexic children to concentrate more or less exclusively on learning to read because once (painfully) acquired the rest of schoolwork becomes the ususal doddle. It also showed fairly conclusively that the educational establishment is completely hopeless with its liberal attitudes to "slow readers" and that the effective way is a regime of short sharp disciplined rote methods. After which all dyslexics are pretty much on a par with everyone else and can return to the tender loving care of the educational establishment.
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DPCrisp


In: Bedfordshire
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My wife and I discussed what I gathered here about the dyslexia programme you mentioned which we missed. She started school with a high reading age, but subsequently shared some experiences with dyslexics {which seem to run in the family -- although that doesn't mean it's genetic}. Nowadays, her greatest difficulty is with spelling aloud rather than on paper.

More to the point, she also describes herself as dysnumerate -- but gets pleasantly surprised from time to time to find that her subconscious can do arithmetic*. But it seems her lack of facility with numbers hinged upon a particularly unpleasant and unhelpful sequence of events at junior school. After that, it's all down hill: you don't trail along at the back of the pack: the series of small failures pushes you further and further back, without getting the chance to catch up. Poor attainment in maths affected her streaming in all subjects for the rest of her school career.

We concluded that the 'proper treatment' is not available. The 'old school' of... um... schooling was strict and unyielding: "this is what you have to learn: if you haven't leaned it in time, you're thick. Tough luck."

Liberal schooling -- "it's not your fault you have learning difficulties. There, there. We cater for individual needs." -- is too yielding to get you anywhere.

My wife probably would have benefited from a path between the two: "you're struggling with this, but you damn well can learn it and you damn well will. We're not leaving anyone behind." But the establishment doesn't do enlightened despotism.

* Her mental arithmetic is sometimes faster than mine, which has never been particularly strong. But temperamentally, I'm a mathematician. When you're confident with a technique, you can leave it aside and pick it up to use as required. Arithmetic is an early staging post in mathematical confidence that people like my wife didn't get beyond. The same thing surely applies in other subjects... and they affect each other.

Dyslexia/dysnumeracy often comes across as a visual disturbance, but, as far as I know, the problem never extends to other patterns that are somewhat like writing. This might indicate that it's just a matter of training.
"I can't always tell P from 9."
"I can't remember the Greek alphabet."
"I can't read a circuit diagram."
"How can you track an animal through there? All I see is trees."
Aren't these all the same? (We are trained in what we see.)

But since our brains are wired for pattern recognition, are highly specialised and fabulously complex, I wouldn't like to say there can't be a defect in a very specific area. (The more complex the system, the more subtle its faults can be. Conversely, if dyslexia can usually be overcome by training, it could be because brains are made to re-wire themselves, too.)
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Mick Harper
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The 'old school' of... um... schooling was strict and unyielding: "this is what you have to learn: if you haven't leaned it in time, you're thick. Tough luck."
Liberal schooling -- "it's not your fault you have learning difficulties. There, there. We cater for individual needs." -- is too yielding to get you anywhere.

Here we have the twin orthodoxies that have led to a hundred years of poor readers (who turn into crims more often than into Colin Chapmans). The "old school" stresses the system i.e. it churns out lots of good readers but throws the misfits onto the scrapheap. The "new" school is child-centred i.e. what does it matter if little Johnnie is a poor reader, we love him anyway.

The AE school -- or at least the one featured in the programme (google 'Cumbrian dyslexia' for the general scheme) -- says, "Fuck all this, why not just cure dyslexia since it is the key to everything else, by the quickest means possible. Which appears to mean taking dyslexic children out of the classroom ["Ooh, the labelling...they'll be traumatised and stigmatised for the rest of their lives." "Possibly, but less than if they go through life unable to read and write."] and giving them a neo-brutalist letter-recognition course.

Which, now I come to think of it, combines both the traditional and the child-centred approach. How very typical.
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Mick Harper
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I have discovered another condition which would appear to be related to dyslexia but not at all concerned with the dyslexic inability to distinguish between letters. It is distinguishing between east and west.

Ishmael, Dan and Lily have all betrayed this tendency. I do not have this but I have what may be the similar difficulty of distinguishing between left and right. In order to do so I have to squiggle a letter in the air and note what hand I have used -- that'll be the right-hand side.

And just as a further point, I am right-handed but a southpaw when it comes to boxing. As a child I could bat both left and right-handed at cricket. Perhaps AEL members might regale us with other anecdotes on this potentially significant subject.
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Ishmael


In: Toronto
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DPCrisp wrote:
My wife and I discussed what I gathered here about the dyslexia programme we missed. She started school with a high reading age, but subsequently shared some experiences with dyslexics {which seem to run in the family -- although that doesn't mean it's genetic}. Nowadays, her greatest difficulty is with spelling aloud rather than on paper.

I was reading before I went to school (four years old or earlier) so I never associated myself with Dyslexia. However, I NEVER learned to spell very well at all. I have about a grade 6 level spelling ability. How is it possible to have no trouble reading words and yet not be able to write them?

Dyslexia/dysnumeracy often comes across as a visual disturbance, but, as far as I know, the problem never extends to other patterns that are somewhat like writing. This might indicate that it's just a matter of training.

I don't think it's visual at all!!!

All the programs on Dyslexia I have seen say that those who have it "perceive" letters and numbers as though they were written backward. I think that's hogwash! What's actually going on is that the brain inside is reversing its polarization -- as a result, the entire universe inverts. It still looks exactly the same. But the processing of the images is inverted. Thus, a dyslexic child will write letters in reverse and I know that I in fact did do this as a kid (though perhaps all children do).

When I turn right meaning left, I don't "see" right as left, but I "think" right as left. The objective right becomes my left.

Now, if the world were consistently one way or another, my brain would not have any trouble. It's the fact that my mental processes swing back and forth between the two orientations that produces the odd bahaviour.

I believe my position rests on an excellent body of evidence. Some sufferers of violent epilepsy have had the pathway between their two brain hemispheres cut (question: is epilepsy the result of two "persons" or "wills" within the one brain, engaging in a struggle for control?). Their seizures go away but they also have very powerful conceptual difficulties when forced to accurately evaluate the world with one eye closed. As each eye communicates to a different hemisphere, one part of the brain is robbed of the information it needs to understand what the other side is seeing.

The left side of the brain dominates in a right-handed person. The right side of the brain dominates in a left-handed person. In either case, subjective left and right remain consistent, even if the internal universe of each person is a mirror image of the other's.

But what happens when the left and right hemispheres continuously exchange control -- one moment the left side is running the show; the next moment, he's handed control over to the right side. Left and right constantly alternate making it impossible for the conscious mind to know where left is going to be at any given time.

But since our brains are wired for pattern recognition, are highly specialised and fabulously complex, I wouldn't like to say there can't be a defect in a very specific area. (The more complex the system, the more subtle its faults can be. Conversely, if dyslexia can usually be overcome by training, it could be because brains are made to re-wire themselves, too.)

Yes. But I think the problem is the dynamism of the re-wiring. A dyslexic brain is not "hard wired" like that of a normal person for one spacial orientation or another. It constantly alters its "wiring" on the fly for whatever situation it finds itself in -- and does so instantly. That means the conscious mind has to deal with constant and unpredictable inversion of the internal universe!

If we were more "hard wired," we could reliably expect "right" to stay right where it damn well has always ever been.
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DPCrisp


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Mick wrote: "Which, now I come to think of it, combines both the traditional and the child-centred approach."

Now you come to think of it? Your dyslexia must extend as far as missing whole paragraphs: like the one following the quote where I said the establishment doesn't provide the path between the two. (Maybe one eye read it and the other didn't.)

"How very typical."


Ish wrote:
I don't think it's visual at all!!! All the programs on Dyslexia I have seen say that those who have it "perceive" letters and numbers as though they were written backward.

I know or know of plenty of people who say letters don't stay still: they jiggle or shimmer. High contrast makes it worse and viewing text through a sheet of plastic or tinted glasses of the right colour often helps. (The best colour and shade varies from person to person.) But they never say they have a problem with other textures or patterns: only writing. Foreign writing isn't affected either: it's just an unrecognisable design.

They don't just flip left-to-right: they can dance up and down... and re-reading the same line instead of tracking down to the next one is common, too.

My son is surprisingly good at anagrams. Where we see a jumble of letters that need thinking about... he evidently recognises each letter correctly but in the wrong order and the word jumps out at him immediately!

Tehre are eaxplems faolintg aurnod to pvore taht we tkae in wrdos at a gnlace: taht jmlbunig all but the fsrit and lsat lteter in ecah wrod is ltilte ipemidmnet to radenig the snese crorctely. But wtih dsylxiecs, tehy seem to be golsesd oevr at a gnlace. Lgoner wdros taht need to be lkooed at cerafluly awyany dn'ot psoe mcuh of a pbolrem, but the snese is lost wehn the ltltie wdros are spikepd. At laset, in smoe cseas.

The mechanics of reading go askew for dyslexics -- in every possible way, between them, I should think -- whether for lack of training or for neurological dysfunction.
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Mick Harper
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The mechanics of reading go askew for dyslexics -- in every possible way, between them, I should think -- whether for lack of training or for neurological dysfunction.

I am surprised that you should harbour doubt as to which it is is. Every child in Britain gets an overabundance of training in reading skills so it must be a neurological dysfunction. (I leave aside those few who will not or cannot attend to the training.)

What is interesting though is that the two current "apparently effective" (one has to acknowledge it's early days) cures have both come out of the anti-orthodox camp. The first -- putting dyslexics through a course of physical exercises in balancing, juggling balls etc -- appears to solve (or grossly mitigate) the condition itself, and was discovered by an eccentric millionaire with a dyslexic daughter. The second -- an intensive course in letter recognition -- presumably does nothing for the underlying cause but means the dyslexic is able to cope reasonably easily with the condition itself, and was cooked up (as far as I can tell) by some renegade educators -- or possibly even some entrepreneurs.

What is of course equally predictable is that orthodoxy, which simply applies normal educational methods i.e. dyslexics get a few extra reading lessons and then given a twenty-five per cent increase in their exam marks to compensate for the fact that the extra lessons have made little difference, fights to the last against these solutions, demanding the usual array of impossible test results, peer reviewed theoretical justifications and so forth. Suck it and see is not a principle that large vested interests take kindly to.

And what is also predictable is that they might very well turn out to be right. The placebo effect seems to work whenever some new method for an incurable condition comes out.
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DPCrisp


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I am surprised that you should harbour doubt as to which it is is. Every child in Britain gets an overabundance of training in reading skills so it must be a neurological dysfunction. (I leave aside those few who will not or cannot attend to the training.)

And they are presumably the key. Perhaps I should have said "lack of effective training", which is a push-pull mechanism between instructor and instructee.

Since the 'cure' appears to be training, how can we tell whether there is a neuropathology to be treated? {At what percentage of incorrigibles do we give up and say "we've tried everything we can think of: there must really be something broken with these ones". And is that the wrong way to decide where neuropathology lies? After all, neurons work by training/learning.}

putting dyslexics through a course of physical exercises in balancing, juggling balls ets -- appears to solve (or grossly mitigate) the condition itself

Yes, dyslexia and dyspraxia often go together: as in my son. My Asperger Dad was astonished at my dyslexic son writing backwards with the wrong hand. And physical training is brain training. If treating dyspraxia remedies dyslexia, then it seems to be a general training issue -- but there are no sharp lines to be drawn here.

I saw a programme once that showed that musical ability was not innate, but developed only through practice. But it didn't say whether natural flair determines who puts the hours -- and the right effort -- into practising.

Similarly, the question of dyspraxia is left open. If you have poor co-ordination, physical exercises (and handwriting) are hard work, which discourages the effort {greater than for other kids who find it easy} needed to overcome it. But with sufficient determination, training eventually frees you of the mental effort of low-level, physical activities. If the obstacle is not overcome, is the dyspraxia too strong or the individual too lazy? Is it possible to tell?
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Mick Harper
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Everything you say may well be true, Dan, but that is precisely what education systems are designed to overcome. You plonk thirty kids down, all with varying abilities and levels-of-commitment (even when entry is pre-selected) and then you go through a programme that ensures that everybody comes out the other side with roughly the same attainment.

The problem with orthodoxy is that it doesn't recognise (or not sufficiently) that inability to read is the key to all other educational methods and that therefore dyslexics must be removed from the mainstream and given a course of treatment that renders the dyslexia null-for-practical-purposes and then the child can be reintruduced. That way it matters not a jot about how the individual child is, he or she is guaranteed to be made whole for further educational purposes.
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DPCrisp


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The problem with orthodoxy is that it doesn't recognise (or not sufficiently) that inability to read is the key to all other educational methods and that therefore dyslexics must be removed from the mainstream and given a course of treatment that renders the dyslexia null-for-practical-purposes and then the child can be reintruduced. That way it matters not a jot about how the individual child is, he or she is guaranteed to be made whole for further educational purposes.


Quite so.
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Rocky



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Mick Harper wrote:
In order to do so I have to squiggle a letter in the air and note what hand I have used -- that'll be the right-hand side.

The other way to distiguish left from right is to hold your hands in front of you, palms facing outward with the fingers closed together and both thumbs pointing inward. The right hand will form a backwards "L", and the left hand will form a proper "L". "L" is for left, that's how you know.

I did this for quite a while, until university when people started making fun of me. Now I can picture the hands in my mind, and I don't have to actually hold them up.
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lyndserae


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i have been annoyed for most of my life with varying forms of dyslexia, from writing words backwards to not being able to dial a phone. my father always told me that it was because i have a hyperactive brain that didn't want to be bothered with little things. i was always an above average reader and very speedy (one of the folks who absorbs ideas from paragraphs rather than reading each word). for me it hasn't been taking in, but putting back out.

until recently, i thought that what i was experiencing had come out of my brain and was manifesting itself in my hands, however...

i started sport shooting a couple of years ago. i am right handed and have rifled that way since i was a child. i had never used a scope before last summer. my instructor couldn't understand why i was not able to see through the rifle scope, so he had me show him how i fire my handgun. he noticed that i was aiming with both eyes open. he asked me to shoot right handed only and noticed that i leaned my left eye in. we then did the a little test with our hands to see if i had a dominant eye. turns out i'm left eye dominant.

i've been shooting from the left since then, with some increased success, but at least i can see through the glass!

that's not interesting, but this is- knowing the above, i had my eyes checked a few weeks ago. i am astigmatic in my left eye and it is the weaker of the two, but i am so left eye dominant that i can't see depth with my left eye covered.

could that actually have something to do with the ordering quirk i have?
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Ishmael


In: Toronto
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Lyndserae,

This is certainly the most innovative proposal I have heard on the subject.

I too have an astigmatism.

However I am puzzled by this remark...

i am so left eye dominant that i can't see depth with my left eye covered.


Depth always requires two eyes. Does it not?

What is it you mean that is special about how you perceive depth with your left eye covered as opposed to how you perceive depth with your right eye covered?
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lyndserae


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I just covered each one to see and when I cover my right eye, the world does get a little flatter, but when I cover the left, everything is right flat in front of me.

I think there's something odd about the "weaker" eye being the dominant. Does it get tired and that's when I have problems or does it get tired from my having ordering problems?
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berniegreen



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I've no idea how recent or ancient this thread is. (I really do think that the dating of posts would be useful, Mr Harper)

But for any of the contributor's to this thread who are seriously interested in brain functionality I would like to recommend a book which I happen to be reading at the moment: "The Brain that Changes Itself" by Norman Doidge. Its principle concern is neuro-plasticity but it also touches on all sorts of perceptual and learning issues. Providing you don't let that flatulent style often used by American academics when writing for a general audience put you off, you will find it fascinating I am sure.
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