Dyslexia - Research Paper Example

Download file to see previous pages... Experts however are having difficulty to agree on a common scientific definition of dyslexia. The British Dyslexia Association defined it as ‘a specific learning difficulty which mainly affects the development of literacy and language related skills.’ The International Dyslexia has it as a specific learning disability that is neurological in origin.’ (International Dyslexia Association). Rose defined dyslexia as a learning difficulty that primarily affects the skills involved in accurate and fluent word reading and spelling’ (Smythe 40). However experts may defined dyslexia, the disability is present when the “the automatization1 of word identification (reading) and/or spelling does not develop or does so very incompletely or with great difficulty” (Smythe 39) and the theories on the etiology of dyslexia is an ever evolving process due to the continuous research made about it. Research also showed that the origin of dyslexia is generally hereditary with some genes that were identified to be generally predisposed to having dyslexia. The specific genes that research has identified to be more predisposed to acquiring dyslexia were brain based. Recent research showed that there are nine chromosomes that are directly linked to the learning difficulty. ...
Four of the genes –DYX1C1 (DYX1), KIAA0319 (DYX2), DCDC2 (DYX2) and ROBO1 (DYX5) – have been implicated in neuronal migration and guidance, suggesting the importance of early neurodevelopmental processes in reading development”(41). Four more additional possible areas (PCNT, DIP2A, S100B and PRMT2) in the chromosome region 21q22.3 have been identified to be linked with dyslexia. This genetic heritability of dyslexia was also confirmed by the Colorado Longitudinal Twin Study of Reading Disability whose study suggests that the shared genetic influence accounted for “86% and 49% of the phenotypic correlations between the two assessments for twin pairs with and without reading difficulties respectively (Wadsworth et al 150) With regard to who gets this disability among the population, Lowenstein reported that the difficulty learning as caused by dyslexia is a condition that affects one in five people3. Some of the obvious symptoms that is correlated with dyslexia include letter reversals in hand writing4, delays in speech and being easily distracted by noise (webmd). Symptoms can also include very poor spelling of words and blending of rhyming of sounds to make words. The classic example to illustrate this spelling difficulty is the paper written by Lowenstein where it was titled “Pediatrician: Dyslexia affects one if five people”. Due to difficulty in reading, students who has dyslexia were also were also found to have difficulty summarizing stories. Learning a foreign language was also found to be a challenge among dyslexics and so is memorizing words and concepts. In extreme cases, a very small population of dyslexics was known to rotate letters when reading reverse words when they write. In the study of Morton and Frith, ...Download file to see next pagesRead More