8/11/2019 Myth Dyslexia Letters

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The Defining Feature of Dyslexia Is Reversing Letters

Humor often reveals our conceptionsand misconceptionsof the world, and few psychologicalconditions are the butt of as many jokes as dyslexia: "I'm an agnostic dyslexic with insomnia. I layawake all night trying to work out if there really is a Dog." Or: "Dyslexics of the world, untie!"

Yet to people with dyslexia, these jokes aren't especially funny. Not only do they poke fun at people witha serious disability, they also reinforce inaccurate stereotypes of people with a genuine psychologicalcondition and underscore just how distant the public's conception of dyslexia is from reality.

Most people believe that the defining feature of dyslexia is "mirror writing" or "mirror reading." Indeed,many laypersons believe that dyslexics literally see letters backward. Two types of reversals arecommonly associated in the public mind with dyslexia: (1) reversing letters themselves, like writing orseeing "b" instead of "d," and (2) reversing the order of letters within words, like writing "tar" instead of"rat." Even among educators--including university faculty, special education teachers, and speechtherapists70 percent believe that reversing the order of letters is a defining feature of dyslexia.

This erroneous belief has early roots. In the 1920s, American neurologist Samuel Orton (1925) coinedthe term strephosymbolia (meaning "twisted symbol") to refer to the tendency to reverse letters, andhypothesized that it was the underlying cause of dyslexia. He also claimed that some children with this

condition could read more easily if they held writing up to a mirror. Orton's views helped to perpetuatethe longstanding belief that letter reversals are central to dyslexia. This misperception, or variants of it,is bolstered not only by jokes but also by media portrayals of dyslexia. For example, the 1994 comedyfilm, Naked Gun 33 1/3, shows lead character Frank Drebin (portrayed by Leslie Nielsen) reading anewspaper featuring the headline "Dyslexia for Cure Found." In the 2001 film, Pearl Harbor, CaptainRafe McCauley (portrayed by Ben Affleck) informs the nurse administering an eye exam that he can'tread letters because "I just get 'em backward sometimes." Even journalists get it wrong: On a NationalPublic Radio show on dyslexia in 2007, the host stated that the "simplest explanation, I suppose, is thatyou see things backwards."

So if dyslexia is not letter reversal, just what is it? Dyslexia (meaning "difficulty with words") is a learningdisability marked by difficulties in processing written language. Dslexics typically experience problemswith reading and spelling despite adequate classroom instruction, and they often they find it challengingto "sound out" and identify printed words. About 5 percent of American children suffer from dyslexia.

Despite what many people believe, dyslexia isn't an indicator of low mental ability, because dyslexiaoccurs in many highly intelligent people. Indeed, the formal diagnosis of dyslexia (or more technically,"reading disorder") requires that children's overall intellectual ability be markedly superior to theirreading ability.

The causes of dyslexia are controversial, although most researchers believe that dyslexics experiencedifficulty with processing phonemes, the smallest units of language that contain meaning. The Englishlanguage, for example, contains 44 phonemes, such as the "c" in "cat" and the "o" in "four." Becausedyslexics find it difficult to parse words into their constituent phonemes, they often make mistakes whenidentifying words. Some researchers believe that a subset of dyslexics have visual deficits in addition todeficits in phoneme processing, but this view is not universally accepted. In any case, there's noevidence that dyslexics literally "see" letters backward or in reverse order within words. Research ontwins strongly suggests that dyslexia is partly influenced by genetic factors.

More important, research conducted over the past few decades demonstrates that letter reversals arehardly distinctive to dyslexia. Both backward writing and letter reversals are commonplace amongchildren age 6 and younger, not only dyslexic children. These errors decrease over time in both groupsof children, although less so among dyslexic children. In addition, most research suggests that letterreversals are only slightly more frequent, and in some studies no more frequent, among dyslexic thannon-dyslexic children. Letter reversals also account for only a small minority of the errors that dyslexicchildren make, so they're certainly not a defining feature of the condition. Finally, although dyslexicchildren are worse spellers than other children of their age, teachers who've worked extensively withdyslexic children can't distinguish their spellings from those of non-dyslexic, but younger, writers. Thisfinding supports the view that normal children make similar spelling errors to those of dyslexic children,but typically "outgrow" them.

So the next time someone asks you if you've heard the joke about the person with dyslexia whoanswers the phone by saying "O hell," you can politely reply that this view of dyslexia is now a fewdecades out of date.