History UsefulNotes / Dyslexia

Real dyslexia is a spectrum: there are some people that are functionally illiterate due to it. There are a lot of others, however, that are simply very bad at reading. If you have a friend that when playing video games once spent 15 minutes looking for the entrance to the Church of the Deus Ex Machina, only for you to point out it's the door that has Church of the Deus Ex Machina above it, that person probably has dyslexia. They can't read fast and might not be able to figure out "Machina" with out doing a lot of work, so he just ignored the text.

* Creator/LeonardoDaVinci

!!Some famous people with dyslexia:

* Creator/JimCarrey

LIsForDyslexia is all about the way the media portrays dyslexia. Generally, fictional dyslexia manifests as scrambled words and letters. Sometimes it's PlayedForDrama because such characters are [[NeverLearnedToRead functionally illiterate]], but more often than not it's PlayedForLaughs because it leads to amusing {{Spoonerism}}s.

In RealLife, as with many things, it's a bit more complicated than that.

Formally, dyslexia comes from the way humans process written language. In English, there are some seriously weird spelling conventions, so there are two ways to figure out how to read a word -- either memorizing what the whole word looks like, or by using ''phonics'', which looks at each individual letter and pieces together how a word is pronounced from there. Dyslexia is best thought of as trouble dealing with phonics -- on at least some level, dyslexics have to read by memorizing words by rote and recognizing them.

As dyslexia is a spectrum, how badly this affects a reader depends on its severity. Some dyslexics will have no problem reading a sentence, as long as they recognize every word in it. If they encounter a word that they've never seen before, they have trouble falling back on the phonics; they won't be able to piece together how the word is pronounced, and they may end up just skipping it or staring at it for an uncomfortably long time. On the more severe end, it can seriously impact the ability to read and can indeed lead to someone becoming functionally illiterate. In its milder form, sometimes referred to as "surface dyslexia", people ''do'' have some phonics capacity but have a tendency to fall back very hard on "sight words" -- anything with an unusual combination of letters is either mistaken for a familiar word which has them (''e.g.'' mixing up "than" and "then") or just ignored.

Indeed, dyslexia is in some ways a side effect of the stupid rules of English orthography. One way to think of it is having to treat each word like it's a unique character, as you might in UsefulNotes/{{Chinese|Language}}. And there have indeed been studies on [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyslexia#Effect_of_language_orthography the prevalence of dyslexia in other languages]], and it's been found to be less prominent in languages that have a more regular orthography than English, like Spanish, Italian, or Korean. The writing systems in such languages make phonics much easier because there are much fewer rules to memorize. On the other hand, there's some belief out there that dyslexia is over-diagnosed in English speaking countries (one in ''four'' students in the UK claim dyslexia and ask for extra time on exams, although not all of them get it).

Dyslexia generally doesn't cause people to see letters in the wrong order when reading. That's mostly a TV convention designed to artistically represent what it might be like. Dyslexics ''might'' mix up words and letters when they write, but it's not really directly caused by dyslexia; it's more a side effect of the difficulty in reading making it difficult to learn to write to begin with. After all, people make typos all the time, and if your sense of phonics is limited, a typo wouldn't really look ''wrong'' and you wouldn't be inclined to correct it. Dyslexics can and do train themselves to learn how to spell words properly, and some might have serious trouble reading but have absolutely no problem writing very well.

There are also several different causes of dyslexia. While it can happen on its own, it might be a consequence of a different problem. For instance, [[AttentionDeficitOohShiny ADD and ADHD]] can lead to mixing up letters from the inattention it causes. Or it could be related to [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotopic_sensitivity_syndrome Irlen Syndrome]], a condition in which the brain doesn't properly pick up signals from the eyes and starts scrambling to adjust, leading to things getting mixed up.

TV-dyslexia therefore includes a lot of things that aren't dyslexia in real life, such as:
* ''Dysgraphia'', a catch-all term for disorders affecting spelling or writing. While it often happens in conjunction with dyslexia, that's not always the case. Dysgraphia can be further divided into "motor dysgraphia", which essentially describes chronically [[TheIllegible awful handwriting]], and "spatial dysgraphia", which includes issues with spacial awareness and putting things together in the correct order. When combined with dyslexia, it can lead to mixing up similar-looking letters like "b" and "d" or RandomlyReversedLetters.
* ''Dyscalculia'', a range of disorders affecting grasp of UsefulNotes/{{Mathematics}}. It can go from someone who has a tendency to get mixed up when counting to someone who cannot comprehend any number past 3.[[note]]There's a real case of this happening to a woman who suffered brain damage in a car accident -- she couldn't say the name of any number past 3. She could say "ate", but when she was shown the word "eight", she could only try to sound it out.[[/note]] Motor dysgraphia can be mistaken for dyscalculia in schools; if a student is very slow to answer math questions, it could be difficulty grasping numbers, or it could just be difficulty writing the answers down.
* ''Dyspraxia'', a range of disorders rising from incorrect development of the area of the brain that controls coordination. It can result in varying degrees of poor hand-eye coordination, sequence memorization, distance judgment, handwriting, basic math skills, and [[YourOtherLeft left-right distinction]]. It makes a lot of aspects of life more difficult, from solving puzzles to playing sports to driving a car.
* ''Auditory dyslexia'', a rare subtype of Auditory Processing Disorder which causes tone-deafness, poor spelling, poor listening comprehension, and sometimes the {{spooneris|m}}tic garbled speech associated with TV-dyslexia.

Dysgraphia can manifest itself more easily on the Internet for several reasons. In part, it's because computer UsefulNotes/{{fonts}} are thought to exacerbate some of the issues of inability to distinguish letters, making more words look the same and making spelling errors look less obvious.[[note]]The common font Comic Sans has been suggested as being easier to read for dyslexics because of its design quirks, like a unique "b" and "d" that are not simply flipped versions of each other. The problem with Comic Sans is that it's ugly as hell and [[TheScrappy no one likes it]].[[/note]] It's entirely possible for someone with [[RougeAnglesOfSatin terrible Internet spelling]] to be dyslexic and not simply lazy; it would behoove the greater Internet to be more patient with these people, especially given that many of their mistakes are thought of as the "uneducated and inattentive" variety (''e.g.'' mixing up "their"/"there"/"they're"). On the other hand, more than one Internet {{troll}} will refuse to spell coherently, angrily claim dyslexia when called on it, and attract "White Knights" to pile on the people who call them on it. It's the Internet; there are no winners.

The bottom line is that the human brain has a lot of different shortcuts that allow people to process language, but not everybody has all of those shortcuts. In some cases, that can be overcome with hard work; in others, it becomes impractical to make it work with so few tools. And since there are many different ways to process language, there are different ways that people might struggle with it. So dyslexia manifests itself in many more ways than TV would have you believe, and many of these ways were long dismissed as just not making an effort to learn English correctly.

LIsForDyslexia is all about the way the media portrays dyslexia. Generally, fictional dyslexia manifests as scrambled words and letters; the difficulty the character has in reading is PlayedForLaughs because of their amusing {{spoonerism}}s or PlayedForDrama because they're illiterate.

In reality, things are a bit more complicated. First off, people read English in two ways: "Sight words" are common words that people memorize, while "phonics" involves sounding out a word by putting together the sounds that the letters make. Some dyslexics have trouble with phonics, thus having to learn to read by rote memorization. These dyslexics thus have trouble reading words that they have never encountered before but have no more problem reading difficult or bizarrely spelled words than any other person. A person with this would be fine reading something as long as they had seen all the words before, but would not be able to figure out any word that they had not seen before. The other type are "surface dyslexics", people that can sound out words no problem, but are unable to just memorize some words, thus when reading something they would go slower [[strike:then]] than others (they can't just skip any 3 letter word that begins with "TH") and would also always have problems with any word that wasn't phonetic. The first type (trouble sounding out words) is the one classically thought of as dyslexia, and more common; [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyslexia#Subtypes_of_developmental_dyslexia Wikipedia mentions]] a study by Castles and Coltheart that found phonic dyslexia in 55% of dyslexic boys. As real dyslexia doesn't actually involve seeing letters in the wrong order (that is just an "artistic representation" of the condition) there are no {{Spoonerism}}s associated with real dyslexia (a very severe form of Dyslexia known as "pure word blindness" does jumble letters around and cause illiteracy, but doesn't impair speech at all).

Real dyslexia is a spectrum: there are some people that are functionally illiterate due to it. There are a lot of others, however, that are simply very bad at reading. If you have a friend that when playing video games once spent 15 minutes looking for the entrance to the Church of the Deus Ex Machina, only for you to point out it's the door that has Church of the Deus Ex Machina above it, that person probably has dyslexia. They can't read fast and might not be able to figure out "Machina" with out doing a lot of work, so he just ignored the text.

Real dyslexia also doesn't necessarily impair writing. While most dyslexics are bad at writing, it's just a side effect. Reading is basically practice on how to spell; thus, if you don't read much, you're not going to learn the various spellings of words very well. There are no physical impairments; many dyslexics, despite being very very bad at reading, have absolutely no problem writing very well. This is different from ''internet'' dyslexics; on message boards, "I'm dyslexic" is often code for "I'm going to make no effort whatsoever to post coherently and people will White Knight if you call me on it" and is popular with trolls.

That is not to say that there aren't dyslexics who are also ''dysgraphic'' (see below) -- the trope for which would be the "backwards S" used to typify children and "dumb" people writing. This can be caused by a problem with sight, or not being able to recognize reflections, thus 'b' and 'd' look the same, and both hands make an 'L'. Learning disabilities are pack animals, like wolves: if you have one, you are much more likely to have another one.

On a side note, dyslexia is not as prevalent in some other countries. The Korean, Spanish, and Italian writing systems have a much more regular correspondence between sound and spelling than French or English. This makes phonics much easier to learn and sight words less critical, and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyslexia#Effect_of_language_orthography studies have found less dyslexia]] among speakers of languages with such regular spellings. In fact, most speakers of those languages don't even feel the need to talk about "spelling" or "dyslexia". Of course, the massive over diagnosis of dyslexia in English-speaking countries doesn't help this bias (in the UK, students can get extra exam time if they're dyslexic: ''one in four'' applies, and although not all of them get it, many doctors no longer even ask for evidence).

In the real world there are a few other types of learning disabilities that often either get lumped together with dyslexia.

* Dysgraphia is a catch all term for disorders affecting spelling and/or writing. The Dyslexic variety causes difficulty with spelling without affecting handwriting or reading ability, though due to the wolflike nature of learning disabilities Dyslexic Dysgraphia and Dyslexia are often found together. Motor Dysgraphia is ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin, and is marked by really awful handwriting. The Spatial variety is caused by problems with spatial awareness and involves perfectly normal spelling skills and bad handwriting not caused by motor issues.
* Dyscalculia is a problem with UsefulNotes/{{Mathematics}}. This can range from some one who has a tendency to get mixed up when counting in their head to someone who can not comprehend any number past 3. There is a real case of a woman who, after a car accident, could not say the name of any number past 3. She could say "ate", but when she was shown the word "eight", she could try to sound it out, but that was it. Motor dysgraphia can be mistaken for dyscalculia in schools: someone who's very slow at answering written math questions may simply be slow because of difficulty writing down the answers.
* ADD/ADHD can cause people to mix up letters when writing and misread things due to the inattention it causes.
* Dyspraxia is caused by incorrect development of the area of the brain that controls coordination, and results in varying degrees of poor hand eye coordination, sequence memorizations, distance judgment, handwriting, basic maths skills and confusion between left and right. It means that puzzles can be a lot more difficult, sport becomes a lot harder and it also makes learning to drive a trial.
* Auditory Processing Disorder has a rare subtype sometimes called "Auditory Dyslexia" which causes tone deafness, poor spelling, worse listening comprehension, and the garbled speech and spoonerisms people associate with real dyslexia.
* Strong visual/spatial reasoning skills can be mistaken for dyslexia: 'd', 'b', 'p', and 'q' are the same shape in different orientations. The easiest way to identify this is if someone has little difficulty reading upside-down or mirror writing, but can't consistently name those four letters of the alphabet.
* Some types of dyslexia are related to [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotopic_sensitivity_syndrome Irlen Syndrome]], in which the brain doesn't properly pick up signals from the eyes, tries to readjust, and things can look scrambled or "floating around" as a result.

Never assume that people (online or off) who claim to be dyslexic are just too damned lazy to read or write properly and are trying to garner sympathy. These conditions are extremely wide-ranging and a lot of people still just don't know where or how to get help, or assume it's just a matter of "trying harder". Until relatively recently many of the above conditions were not recognized or thought to be relatively uncommon. People who had them (especially in "milder" forms) ''were'' written off as "just lazy". They go through life believing this and struggling on their own to overcome it.

In reality, things are a bit more complicated. First off, people read English in two ways: "Sight words" are common words that people memorize, while "phonics" involves sounding out a word by putting together the sounds that the letters make. Some dyslexics have trouble with phonics, thus having to learn to read by rote memorization. These dyslexics thus have trouble reading words that they have never encountered before but have no more problem reading difficult or bizarrely spelled words than any other person. A person with this would be fine reading something as long as they had seen all the words before, but would not be able to figure out any word that they had not seen before. The other type are "surface dyslexics", people that can sound out words no problem, but are unable just memorize some words, thus when reading something they would go slower [[strike:then]] than others (they can't just skip any 3 letter word that begins with "TH") and would also always have problems with any word that wasn't phonetic. The first type (trouble sounding out words) is the one classically thought of as dyslexia, and more common; [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyslexia#Subtypes_of_developmental_dyslexia Wikipedia mentions]] a study by Castles and Coltheart that found phonic dyslexia in 55% of dyslexic boys. As real dyslexia doesn't actually involve seeing letters in the wrong order (that is just an "artistic representation" of the condition) there are no {{Spoonerism}}s associated with real dyslexia (a very severe form of Dyslexia known as "pure word blindness" does jumble letters around and cause illiteracy, but doesn't impair speech at all).

* Dyscalculia is a problem with math. This can range from some one who has a tendency to get mixed up when counting in their head to someone who can not comprehend any number past 3. There is a real case of a woman who, after a car accident, could not say the name of any number past 3. She could say "ate", but when she was shown the word "eight", she could try to sound it out, but that was it. Motor dysgraphia can be mistaken for dyscalculia in schools: someone who's very slow at answering written math questions may simply be slow because of difficulty writing down the answers.

* Dyspraxia is caused by incorrect development of the area of the brain that controls coordination, and results in varying degrees of poor hand eye coordination, sequence memorisations, distance judgment, handwriting, basic maths skills and confusion between left and right. It means that puzzles can be a lot more difficult, sport becomes a lot harder and it also makes learning to drive a trial.

In reality, things are a bit more complicated. First off, people read English in two ways: "Sight words" are common words that people memorize, while "phonics" involves sounding out a word by putting together the sounds that the letters make. Some dyslexics have trouble with phonics, thus having to learn to read by rote memorization. These dyslexics thus have trouble reading words that they have never encountered before but have no more problem reading difficult or bizarrely spelled words than any other person. A person with this would be fine reading something as long as they had seen all the words before, but would not be able to figure out any word that they had not seen before. The other type are "surface dyslexics", people that can sound out words no problem, but are unable just memorize some words, thus when reading something they would go slower [[strike:then]] than others (they can't just skip any 3 letter word that begins with "TH") and would also always have problems with any word that wasn't phonetic. The first type (trouble sounding out words) is the one classically thought of as dyslexia, and more common; [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyslexia#Subtypes_of_developmental_dyslexia Wikipedia mentions]] a study by Castles and Coltheart that found phonic dyslexia in 55% of dyslexic boys. As real dyslexia doesn't actually involve seeing letters in the wrong order (that is just an "artistic representation" of the disease) there are no {{Spoonerism}}s associated with real dyslexia (a very severe form of Dyslexia known as "pure word blindness" does jumble letters around and cause illiteracy, but doesn't impair speech at all).

Real dyslexia is a spectrum: there are some people that are functionally illiterate due to it. There are a lot of others, however, that are simply very bad at reading. If you have a friend that when playing video games once spent 15 minutes looking for the entrance to the Church of the Deus Ex Machina, only for you to point out it's the door that has Church of the Deus Ex Machina above it, that person probably has dyslexia. He can't read fast and might not be able to figure out "Machina" with out doing a lot of work, so he just ignored the text.

That is not to say there aren't dyslexics who are also ''dysgraphic'' (see below) -- the trope for which would be the "backwards S" used to typify children and "dumb" people writing. This can be caused by a problem with sight, or not being able to recognize reflections, thus 'b' and 'd' look the same, and both hands make an 'L'. Learning disabilities are pack animals, like wolves: if you have one, you are much more likely to have another one.

On a side note, dyslexia is not as prevalent in some other countries. The Korean, Spanish, and Italian writing systems have a much more regular correspondence between sound and spelling than French or English. This makes phonics much easier to learn and sight words less critical, and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyslexia#Effect_of_language_orthography studies have found less dyslexia]] among speakers of languages with such a regular spelling. In fact, most speakers of those languages don't even feel the need to talk about "spelling" or "dyslexia". Of course, the massive overdiagnosis of dyslexia in English-speaking countries doesn't help this bias (in the UK, students can get extra exam time if they're dyslexic: ''one in four'' applies, and although not all of them get it, many doctors no longer even ask for evidence).

* Dyspraxia is caused by incorrect development of the area of the brain that controls coordination, and results in varying degrees of poor hand eye coordination, sequence memorisation, distance judgment, handwriting, basic maths skills and confusion between left and right. It means that puzzles can be a lot more difficult, sport becomes a lot harder and it also makes learning to drive a trial...

* ADD/ADHD [[AttentionDeficitOohShiny has its own page]].

* Dyscalculia is a problem with math. This can range from some one who has a tendency to get mixed up when counting in their head to someone who can not comprehend any number past 3. There is a real case of a woman who, after a car accident, could not say the name of any number past 3. She could say "ate", but were she shown the word "eight", she could try to sound it out, but that was it. Motor dysgraphia can be mistaken for dyscalculia in schools: someone who's very slow at answering written math questions may simply be slow because of difficulty writing down the answers.

Real dyslexia also doesn't necessarily impair writing. While most dyslexics are bad at writing, it's just a side effect. Reading is basically practice on how to spell; thus, if you don't read much, you're not going to learn the various spellings of words very well. There are no physical impairments; many dyslexics, despite being very very bad at reading, have absolutely no problem writing very well. This is different from ''internet'' dyslexics; on message boards, "I'm dyslexic" is often code for "I'm going to make no effort whatsoever to post coherently and people will [[WhiteKnighting White Knight]] if you call me on it" and is popular with trolls.

Real dyslexia also doesn't necessarily impair writing. While most dyslexics are bad at writing, it's just a side effect. Reading is basically practice on how to spell; thus, if you don't read much, you're not going to learn the various spellings of words very well. There are no physical impairments; many dyslexics, despite being very very bad at reading, have absolutely no problem writing very well. This is different from ''internet'' dyslexics; on message boards, "I'm dyslexic" is usually code for "I'm going to make no effort whatsoever to post coherently and people will [[WhiteKnighting White Knight]] if you call me on it" and is popular with trolls.

In real life, a lot of people who are simply too damned lazy to read will claim to be dyslexic in order to receive sympathy.
That is NOT always the case though, many people with dyslexia work hard to overcome their disability.

* Dyscalculia is a problem with math. This can range from some one who has a tendency to get mixed up when counting in their head to someone who can not comprehend any number past 3. There is a real case of a woman who, after a car accident, could not say the name of any number past 3. She could say "ate", but were she shown the word "eight", she could try to sound it out, but that was it.

* Dyspraxia is caused by incorrect development of the area of the brain that controls coordination, and results in varying degrees of poor hand eye coordination, sequence memorisation, distance judgment, handwriting, basic maths skills and confusion between left and right. It makes learning to drive a trial...

On a side note, dyslexia is not as prevalent in some other countries. The Korean, Spanish, and Italian writing systems have a much more regular correspondence between sound and spelling than French or English. This makes phonics much easier to learn and sight words less critical, and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyslexia#Effect_of_language_orthography studies have found less dyslexia]] among speakers of languages with such a regular spelling. In fact, most speakers of those languages don't even feel the need to talk about "spelling" or "dyslexia". On the other side of the planet, the JapaneseLanguage has two writing systems: the phonetic "kana" based on a symbol for each syllable (''mora'') (e.g. "[[KatamariDamacy ka-ta-ma-ri]]" is four characters), and the logographic "kanji," each of which has multiple pronounciations and/or meanings. Kanji are borrowed from Chinese and designed to represent Chinese words semi-phonetically, but in Japanese are often used to represent native Japanese words based on meaning alone. Kana, however, are so easy that when a young English speaking kid moved to Japan as a teenager, within months he was better at reading Japanese than English. Of course, the massive overdiagnosis of dyslexia in English-speaking countries doesn't help this bias (in the UK, students can get extra exam time if they're dyslexic: ''one in four'' applies, and although not all of them get it, many doctors no longer even ask for evidence).

* Dyscalculia is a problem with math. This can range from some one who has a tendency to get mixed up when counting in their head to some one who can not comprehend any number past 3. There is a real case of a woman who, after a car accident could not say the name of any number past 3, she could say ate, but show her the word eight, she could try to sound it out but that was it.

That is NOT always the case though,many people with dyslexia work hard to overcome their disability.