Moving Forward with Dyslexia:
Latest Developments in
Research and Practice
Barbara Pavey
Athens April 2013
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What is Dyslexia?
• A particular difficulty in the area of literacy
• May be called a specific learning difficulty
(SpLD)
• There are SpLD in other areas too
(numeracy, language, attention deficit
disorder (ADD/ADHD) autistic spectrum
disorders
• IN USA = learning disability
• Debate about whether to use the term
‘dyslexia’
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Definitions
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Many
Continuously developing
Include reading, writing, spelling,
Difficulty remains in spite of teaching
May include memory, organisation,
mathematics, spatial perception, language
• Not necessarily linked to high intelligence
• Emotional impact
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Incidence
• Generally described as one child in ten, but
some think it is higher – 4% significant
• Generally has been thought of as a difficulty
of boys, but girls now thought under-identified
• Covers a range from severe to mild
• Now thought of as continuously distributed –
i.e. in the range of regular reading acquisition,
the end where there is greatest difficulty
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Someone who experiences
Dyslexia
• May have good days and bad days for literacy
activities
• May forget what has already been learned
• Has difficulty making connections between sounds,
spellings, writing patterns
• Finds it hard to perceive the consistency in these
• Does not experience literacy skills becoming
automatic
• May experience more fatigue than other learners
• May frustrate and puzzle parents, teachers and
themselves for these reasons
• Performs literacy tasks at level of a younger child
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Developmental dyslexia
• ‘Acquired’ dyslexia (following brain injury)
• ‘Developmental’ dyslexia - possibly born with this
learning characteristic, but may only be relevant
when a child has to become literate
• Impact increases with stress and fatigue
• Can be affected by environment at biological,
cognitive and performance (behavioural) levels
• Neuroscience suggest reduced or different
neurological activation
• Impact of practice and experience still to be explored
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Current view
• Phonological (sounds) processing is the thing
that most children with dyslexia find difficult.
• They have difficulty hearing (processing)
sounds and sound similarities and have
difficulty interpreting sounds in terms of
written letters (orthography)
• Dyslexia manifests itself in different ways
where there are different orthographies and
writing systems
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Coloured overlays & lenses
• Still controversial
• May hear of visual stress/ scotopic
sensitivity/Meares-Irlen Syndrome
• Some people with dyslexia thought to
experience this & to benefit from tinted paper
or lenses
• 33-46% of dyslexic people, approx. 14% of
general population
• Not itself a feature of dyslexia
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Overlapping ‘Syndromes’ or
Learning Characteristics
A child's needs may be more complex than is
suggested by a single ‘label’
A number of children will show combinations of
learning difficulties such as:
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dyslexia,
dyscalculia,
dyspraxia,
attention difficulties
Social communication difficulties (ASC or D)
emotional and behavioural difficulties (SEBD)
Coming soon:
ICD-11 and DSM-V
• International Classification of Diseases, 11th
revision ( Word Health Organisation)
• Due 2015; used in Europe
• https://www.who.int/ - comments welcomed
• Diagnostic and statistical manual of Mental
Disorders, 5th ed. (American Psychiatric
Association)
• Due May 2013; used in USA & UK
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ICD-11
• Specific reading/spelling disorder
• Not from other causes e.g. mental age, visual acuity,
inadequate schooling
• May affect reading comprehension, word recognition,
oral reading, literacy tasks
• Spelling difficulties may linger
• Possible associated emotional and behavioural
disturbances during schooling
• “Entire brain”
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DSM-V
Critique by Snowling (2012):
• Dyslexia term used for first time
• “Difficulties in accuracy or fluency of reading…not
consistent with the person’s chronological age,
educational opportunities, or intellectual abilities”
• Fluency recognised as a characteristic
• No spelling (disorder of ‘written expression’)
• No comprehension (language impairment)
• Separates reading and language impairment
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Recent developments in Dyslexia
Research
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Information from brain scanning
Information from genetic research
Information from other orthographies
Information from longitudinal studies ( e.g.
Lyytinen et al.)
• Centrality of phonological difficulty (not the
whole picture – research continues)
Genetic research and findings
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Can be inherited
Often there are other family members with dyslexia
They may have had dyslexia that was not identified
Evidence for a genetic link is increasing, but not
clear-cut
• Currently 15 genes considered to be involved, some
studied more closely, esp. on chromosomes 6 & 15
• e.g. KIAA0319, DYX1C1, DCDC2, ( Darki et al. 2012)
• Probably mutations of dyslexia-susceptible genes
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Findings from neuroscience
• Many hypotheses
• Information gained via EEG, fMRI, PET scans
• Confirm activation in language centres, but activation
is reduced compared to controls
• May show activation of other areas (compensation)
• Current interest in density of grey & also white
matter in brain
• Interest in neuronal migration – brain cell in wrong
place
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Orthography
• English shown to be most complex of alphabetic
systems, with learning needed at word, syllable and
phoneme level ( Ziegler & Goswami 2005)
• Other orthographies include phonological difficulty
but without the same level of emphasis, e.g.
• Transparent orthography e.g. Finnish – speed of
processing is a key difficulty
• Arabic – related to positioning of dots in the written
language
• Chinese – related to positioning of strokes in the
characters
• Greek – which of 2 possible spellings
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Jyvaskyla longitudinal study
of dyslexia ( JLD)
• Finnish team lead by Lyytinen, prestigious
international collaborators
• Screened 8000 families with 1 dyslexic parent
+ 1 dyslexic close relative, expecting baby
1993 - 96
• Comprehensive follow-up of 108 children +
matched control group of 92
• Study from birth to 9th grade, final cohort 2012
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JLD key findings
• Confirms familial risk for dyslexia
• Best predictors of decoding accuracy & speed:
phonological awareness; rapid automatized naming;
letter knowledge
• In spelling, key factor = phonological awareness
• In comprehension, key factor = vocabulary
• Very early predictors of pre-literacy skills = brain’s
electrical responses to tones and speech sounds at
birth
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JLD environmental links:
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Maternal supportive behaviour in play
Maternal activating strategy
Parent-child book sharing
Teaching children letter-names at home
Classroom membership (possibly)
Reading interest (possibly)
https://www.jyu.fi/
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‘2nd generation’ hypotheses
(post 2000) -integration
British Psych Society ( 1999, 2005) = 10 + hypotheses.
Further developments integrating some of these are:
1. Cerebellar ( Fawcett & Nicholson)
2. Asynchrony (Breznitz e.g. 2009)
3. Temporal Sampling Theory (Goswami e.g. 2013)
4. Neurogenetics + auditory processing (Giraud &
Ramus 2013)
Value and importance of the phonological deficit
hypothesis ( e.g. Hulme and Snowling 2009) always
acknowledged
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Giraud and Ramus hypothesis linking
genes, neuroscience, auditory perception, &
phonological difficulty
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Mutation of dyslexia-susceptible genes
Affects neuronal migration (at microscopic level)
Disrupts/impairs synchronous neural interactions
Auditory perception at specific frequencies is
disrupted
• Has impact on phonological processing
• But this may not be faulty- it may be availability that is
hampered
• Research does not address visual elements
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Pedagogy
• Some dyslexic learners will need additional,
individual help to gain literacy skills
• A systematic phonics approach
• New learning connected to previous learning
• Greater intensity of stimulus
• Look for strengths and weaknesses – is the
visual channel or the aural one favoured?
How does the learner take in information?
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Literacy activity and Dyslexia
• Phonological practice builds skills – now we
have phonics emphasis
• Multisensory methods are very important
• rhyming, clapping, chanting and singing
games, and hearing the ‘beat’ in syllables
also very important
• Not all children with dyslexia show identified
phonological difficulty (may be an effect of
testing)
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Strategies for support in class
• Child/adult should be educated at
his/her ability level not literacy level
• Always a multisensory approach
• Instructions in small number of steps
• Over-learning: revisit, revise, repeat
(with variation)
• Use of alternative ways of recording
• Use of ICT
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More strategies
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Use mnemonics – if they work
Use tinted backgrounds
Use larger fonts
Use concrete (real) apparatus for longer
Mind Maps®, diagrams, flow charts, pictures,
actions
• Differentiation
• Look for quality, not quantity
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Wondering whether a child
may be experiencing dyslexia
• Be a good observer – how does a learner
tackle their task?
• Be cautious – there may be other causes of
difficulties, e.g. general delay, inexperience,
fatigue
• Be receptive to parent's concerns
• Use British Dyslexia Association checklist
• Talk to someone more knowledgeable
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UK: Dyslexia-friendly initiative (BDA
1999) from the work of Neil Mackay
• Puts responsibility into schools, not with
external specialist teacher
• Puts dyslexia-friendly principle in Local
Authority and school action plans
• Puts dyslexia specialist in each school,
cascades training to whole staff
• Follows pedagogy & ideas that help
children with dyslexia
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Dyslexia-friendly principles and
practice
• Making ‘reasonable adjustments’ - anticipatory,
advantageous
• Adapting the learning environment, inc. materials,
methods, pedagogy, by
• Using multisensory approaches, alternative methods of
recording, ways of showing knowledge ( eg mind map®)
• Fading out practices that people with dyslexia find hard,
e.g. copying, memory tasks, writing quantity,
• Doing proactive , minimal marking
• Giving ‘big picture’ & avoiding assumptions of linear logic
• Doing things that people with dyslexia find helpful
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USA: 7 original principles of
universal design (Mace 1998)
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Equitable use
Flexibility in use
Simple and intuitive
Perceptible information
Tolerance for error
Low physical effort
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Universal design in the context of
education
Puts these in pedagogic terms, plus:
• A community of learners –the instructional
environment promotes interaction and
communication among the students and
between students and faculty
• Instructional climate –instruction is designed to
be welcoming and inclusive. High expectations
are espoused for all students
• (Shaw, Scott and McGuire, 2001)
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Universal Design and Dyslexiafriendly principles : congruency
• Close relationship between both sets of
principles
• Both say that following the principles is
good for inclusion and good for all
learners
• Both allow for the possible need for
specialist input beyond their inclusive
principles
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Dyslexia-aware teachers
need:
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Attitude -supportive, interested
Understanding – of dyslexia, updated
Technique – helpful to dyslexia
Empathy – for lack of confidence,
fatigue, stress, fear
• There is always more than one way to
teach
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The end
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