What is dyslexia symptoms, types, causes and treatment

Dyslexia is a language disorder of neurobiological origin, which mainly affects literacy, that is, the ability to read and write. These skills are separate but united processes at the same time, since when we write we are forced to constantly involve reading activities.

In addition, dyslexia is one of the learning disorders that occurs more frequently in child population, with a prevalence of between 5% and 10%, although according to some studies it can reach 17.5%. So dyslexia, without a doubt, represents a very important problem, due to its consequences in the academic field and its emotional repercussions.

If you are interested in knowing more about dyslexia, do not hesitate to continue reading this Psychology-online article: What is dyslexia: symptoms, types, causes and treatment.

1. Symptoms of dyslexia
2. Dyslexia types
3. Causes of dyslexia
4. Dyslexia treatment

Symptoms of dyslexia

Commonly dyslexia begins to detect when the child begins to enter the literacy learning process, that is, after 2-3 years until approximately 7. It is vital to make an early detection of the symptoms of dyslexia.

The main symptoms of dyslexia are the following:

• The main symptom that characterizes, generally and in broad strokes, to dyslexia is a Great difficulty during learning and the acquisition of reading, which is an unexpected difficulty in relation to other skills shown by the person and their educational circumstances.
• The second most common symptom among people suffering from dyslexia is the Low school performance in all those subjects that require reading As a learning basis, since having difficulties in reading and writing implies greater difficulty in the learning process of certain subjects or concepts. For example, they can give problems in the rhythm and speed of written language learning, Difficulties for copying from the slate to the notebook, among others. In addition, it must be taken into account that reading and writing are essential in most subjects, either when reading books or reading the questions and writing the answers in an exam.
• Phonological deficit: The vast majority of people suffering from dyslexia, at the same time suffer from a phonological deficit, that is, a deficit in some aspect of the representation and processing of language sounds. This may be due to a weak ability to consciously attend and manipulate the sounds of the tongue, to a short -term verbal memory that limits the ability to maintain the phonological representations momentarily, and/or to a slow ability to recover the phonological forms From words with the aim of embarking on the speech articulation.
• Auditory processing problems, especially the rapid processing of sounds.
• Visual acuity problems.
• Motor problems.
• Difficulties in paying.
• The person shows slowness or anomaly in the development of verbal language.
• Difficulties In reading, writing, spelling, vision, motor coordination, mathematics, time understanding, situation in space and limitation of the ability to integrate information that they understand separately. That is, they confuse letters, change syllables, suppress or add letters or words, present difficulty memorizing spelling rules and present difficulty in fine and thick motor skills.

These are the characteristics that you can notice if you suspect your child has dyslexia. You can also perform these 10 exercises to detect dyslexia.

Dyslexia types

Dyslexia is mainly divided into three great types. The three types of dyslexia are:

1. Phonological dyslexia: People who suffer from this type of dyslexia show problems for the development of graphonemic reading (that is, syllable).
2. Surface dyslexia: In this type of dyslexia, people show difficulties for the development of lexical reading, so that they present problems in words that do not share writing with pronunciation, since it does not fit the rules of conversion grapheme to phoneme. For example, "there" is a word that in its written version has three letters, but when pronouncing it, the "H" is mute and only two of the three letters are pronounced.
3. Mixed dyslexia: This type of dyslexia corresponds to the people who show a combination of the two previous types of dyslexia.

Causes of dyslexia

Currently, and despite the large amount of research on dyslexia, the causes of their origin are not known exactly. Thus, they could be mentioned, as possible causes of dyslexia:

• Hereditary factors: If there are a history of relatives suffering from dyslexia, the person will be more likely to suffer dyslexia.
• Genetics: Another cause of dyslexia are genetic factors.
• Brain injuries.
• Emotional problems.
• Sequences orientation problems: Another cause of dyslexia are the problems in sequences orientation. Sequence orientation allows people to order objects, events (past, present future), among others. People who suffer from dyslexia show difficulties to temporarily order the events of a book, for example.
• Visual perception problems/Perceptual-visual disorder.
• Lack of cerebral dominance: The brain is divided into two hemispheres (the right and the left), so that the right part of the brain has the role of controlling the left part of the body and, on the contrary, the left part of the brain controls the right part of the right of the body. Thus, people who have a dominance on the left side of the brain have more ease of controlling the right part of their body and present more difficulties in controlling the left (for example, in this case they would write with their right hand, they would chute a ball with the right leg ...). Therefore, the lack of brain dominance refers to the two parts of the brain, leading to difficulties of effectively dominating the body, including hands and fingers when writing.
• Another cause of dyslexia is Bad connection between the two cerebral hemispheres.
• Low phonological awareness.

Dyslexia treatment

Regarding the treatment of dyslexia, some considerations are necessary. First, it is important attend to dyslexia early, since both reading and writing are essential processes in human development. On the one hand, reading provides cognitive autonomy, creates habits of reflection, effort, concentration, among others. On the other hand, writing serves to relate to the environment, as a form of expression, as a study tool, and much more.

Dyslexia is not a curable disorder, but it can be treated, using different therapeutic approaches according to people's age. Fundamentally dyslexia treatment measures are based on interventions on language, phonology and reading, adapting each and every one of the measures to the individual, in order to customize the treatment to the individual needs and characteristics of each person. Also adapting the treatment to age, as the application of treatment techniques to children is different than dyslexia in adolescents.

It is common that people suffering from dyslexia present other associated problems, which must also be treated, such as care difficulties, motor difficulties, among others.

A usual practice that is carried out in the treatment of dyslexia, is the so -called “over -learning”, which consists in re -learning the process of literacy, but, in this case, adapting the rhythm to the nearby development zone of person. That is, it consists of adapt the teaching-learning process of literacy adapted to the person's rhythm and characteristics. In addition, in the treatment of dyslexia there is special emphasis to work with the guiding principle of learning without errors, promoting successes throughout the process, since, people suffering from dyslexia usually present a low tolerance to frustration.

In short, from the treatment of dyslexia it is sought Correct the deteriorated factors or functions that originate the symptoms of dyslexia And, therefore, promote an improvement in school learning, academic performance and success in life.

This article is merely informative, in psychology-online we have no power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

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