The changes I want to see (2. In-depth study）

In the previous section I asked some initial questions, and then I need to look at the specific questions that were asked.

1. What is dyslexia?

Dyslexia, also known as reading disorder, is a disorder characterized by reading below the expected level for their age. Different people are affected to different degrees. Problems may include difficulties in spelling words, reading quickly, writing words, “sounding out” words in the head, pronouncing words when reading aloud, and understanding what one reads. Often these difficulties are first noticed at school. When someone who previously could read loses their ability, it is known as alexia. The difficulties are involuntary and people with this disorder have a normal desire to learn. most common learning disability and occurs in all areas of the world. It affects 3–7% of the population; however, up to 20% of the general population may have some degree of symptoms. It’s estimated up to 1 in every 10 people in the UK has some degree of dyslexia. While dyslexia is more often diagnosed in boys, this is partly explained by a self-fulfilling ‘referral bias’ among teachers and professionals. It has even been suggested that the condition affects men and women equally.

Words are seen by dyslexic people

Words are seen by dyslexic people

Dyslexia is divided into developmental and acquired forms. 

developmental dyslexia, i.e., dyslexia that begins in early childhood. 

Acquired dyslexia occurs subsequent to neurological insult, such as traumatic brain injury or stroke. 

Some shared symptoms of the speech or hearing deficits and dyslexia:

Characteristics of dyslexia？

  1. Confusion with before/after, right/left, and so on
  2. Difficulty learning the alphabet
  3. Difficulty with word retrieval or naming problems
  4. Difficulty identifying or generating rhyming words, or counting syllables in words (phonological awareness)
  5. Difficulty with hearing and manipulating sounds in words (phonemic awareness)
  6. Difficulty distinguishing different sounds in words (auditory discrimination)
  7. Difficulty in learning the sounds of letters (In alphabetic writing systems)
  8. Difficulty associating individual words with their correct meanings
  9. Difficulty with timekeeping and concept of time
  10. Confusion with combinations of words
  11. Difficulty in organization skills

In terms of Reading and spelling we find that:

  1. Spelling errors — Because of difficulty learning letter-sound correspondences, individuals with dyslexia might tend to misspell words, or leave vowels out of words.
  2. Letter order – People with dyslexia may also reverse the order of two letters especially when the final, incorrect, word looks similar to the intended word
  3. Letter addition/subtraction – People with dyslexia may perceive a word with letters added, subtracted, or repeated. This can lead to confusion between two words containing most of the same letters.
  4. Highly phonemicized spelling – People with dyslexia also commonly spell words inconsistently, but in a highly phonetic form such as writing “shud” for “should”. Dyslexic individuals also typically have difficulty distinguishing among homophones such as “their” and “there”.
  5. Seeing words backward sometimes – a person sometimes might see the words backward.
  • What are the causes of dyslexia?

Generally, the causes of dyslexia can be divided into three types: neuroanatomical, genetic, and environmental.

Neuroanatomy

Neuroimaging techniques, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron emission tomography (PET), have shown a correlation between both functional and structural differences in the brains of children with reading difficulties. Some people with dyslexia show less electrical activation in parts of the left hemisphere of the brain involved with reading, such as the inferior frontal gyrus, inferior parietal lobule, and the middle and ventral temporal cortex. Over the past decade, brain activation studies using PET to study language have produced a breakthrough in the understanding of the neural basis of language. Neural bases for the visual lexicon and for auditory verbal short-term memory components have been proposed, with some implication that the observed neural manifestation of developmental dyslexia is task-specific (i.e., functional rather than structural). fMRI of people with dyslexia indicates an interactive role of the cerebellum and cerebral cortex as well as other brain structures in reading. The cerebellar theory of dyslexia proposes that impairment of cerebellum-controlled muscle movement affects the formation of words by the tongue and facial muscles, resulting in the fluency problems that some people with dyslexia experience. The cerebellum is also involved in the automatization of some tasks, such as reading. The fact that some children with dyslexia have the motor task and balance impairments could be consistent with a cerebellar role in their reading difficulties. However, the cerebellar theory has not been supported by controlled research studies.

Genetics

Research into potential genetic causes of dyslexia has its roots in the post-autopsy examination of the brains of people with dyslexia. Observed anatomical differences in the language centers of such brains include microscopic cortical malformations known as ectopias, and more rarely, vascular micro-malformations, and microgyrus—a smaller than usual size for the gyrus. The previously cited studies and others suggest that abnormal cortical development, presumed to occur before or during the sixth month of fetal brain development, may have caused the abnormalities. Abnormal cell formations in people with dyslexia have also been reported in non-language cerebral and subcortical brain structures. Several genes have been associated with dyslexia, including DCDC2 and KIAA0319 on chromosome 6, and DYX1C1 on chromosome 15.

Gene-environment interaction

The contribution of gene-environment interaction to reading disability has been intensely studied using twin studies, which estimate the proportion of variance associated with a person’s environment and the proportion associated with their genes. Both environmental and genetic factors appear to contribute to reading development. Studies examining the influence of environmental factors such as parental education and teaching quality have determined that genetics have greater influence in supportive, rather than less optimal, environments. However, more optimal conditions may just allow those genetic risk factors to account for more of the variance in the outcome because the environmental risk factors have been minimized. As the environment plays a large role in learning and memory, it is likely that epigenetic modifications play an important role in reading ability. Measures of gene expression, histone modifications, and methylation in the human periphery are used to study epigenetic processes; however, all of these have limitations in the extrapolation of results for application to the human brain.

  • Is dyslexia treatable?

Dyslexia is a condition that can occur throughout the life of the person affected. With effective intervention, in many cases, they can develop optimal learning skills in reading and writing               (International Dyslexia Association, 2016)

  1. In many cases, interventions will be required from specialist therapists who will use different multisensory strategies to cope with dyslexia. It is important to intervene through a systematic approach involving multiple senses  (International Dyslexia Association, 2016)
  2. Students with dyslexia often need repeated feedback and lots of practice to successfully and effectively develop word recognition skills  (International Dyslexia Association, 2016).
  3. In principle, there is no treatment that can completely eliminate the symptoms of dyslexia. However, many children with this pathology can learn to read more or less normally if compensatory strategies are used from a very early age. These treatments usually focus on teaching the child to correctly associate each letter with the sound it represents. In this way, many of the difficulties caused by dyslexia will disappear or be significantly reduced.  （NHS UK,2018)
  • Is it possible to intersect dyslexia with the areas I have studied previously and identify the connections?

In my last independent research project, I studied the topic of optical illusions, which included some theories on the psychology of perception, semiotics, and optic neuroscience. And In my last group work, my group studied data visualization in computer science, using big data to test the potential of artificial intelligence and to make amazing paintings. So vision and computer technology are the two key words in the field I have studied before.

As mentioned earlier, in some therapeutic approaches the intervention of a specialist therapist is required who will use different multisensory strategies to deal with dyslexia. It is important to intervene through a systematic approach involving multiple senses.

    

So, I wondered if some multi-sensory media with computer technology could be used to assist dyslexics to learn and read more effectively (As I am not a medical professional, I cannot give advice to patients in the area of medical expertise); what I would like to do is simply to see if I can assist them and develop their interest in reading. , This got me thinking about a technology that is being developed today that might actually be useful, and that is AR, Augmented reality.

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Sources referenced, books, and papers：

 “Dyslexia Information Page”. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. 2 November 2018.

 “What are reading disorders?”. National Institutes of Health. 1 December 2016.

 Peterson, Robin L.; Pennington, Bruce F. (May 2012). “Developmental dyslexia”. Lancet. 379 (9830): 1997–2007.

  Kooij, J. J. Sandra (2013). Adult ADHD diagnostic assssement and treatment (3rd ed.). London: Springer. p. 83.

 “How many people are affected by/at risk for reading disorders?”. National Institutes of Health. Archived from the original on 2 April 2015. Retrieved 15 March 2015.

 Arnett, A. B., Pennington, B. F., Peterson, R. L., Willcutt, E. G., DeFries, J. C., & Olson, R. K. (2017). Explaining the sex difference in dyslexia. Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines, 58(6), 719–727.

“What are some signs of learning disabilities?”. Retrieved 20 February 2022.

 Whitaker, Harry A. (2010). Concise Encyclopedia of Brain and Language. Elsevier. p. 180. ISBN 978-0-08-096499-7. Archived from the original on 9 January 2017.

  Pammer, Kristen (January 2014). “Brain mechanisms and reading remediation: more questions than answers”. Scientifica. 

 Price, cathy (16 August 2012). “A Review and Synthesis of the first 20 years of Pet and fMRI studies of heard Speech, Spoken Language and Reading”. NeuroImage. 62 (2): 816–847.

 Sharifi, S (May 2014). “Neuroimaging essentials in essential tremor: a systematic review”. NeuroImage: Clinical. 5: 217–231.

 Brandler, William (February 2014). “The genetic relationship between handedness and neurodevelopmental disorders”. Trends in Molecular Medicine. 20 (2): 83–90. 

 Levav, Itzhak (2009). Psychiatric and Behavioral Disorders in Israel: From Epidemiology to Mental health. Green Publishing. p. 52. ISBN 9789652294685. Retrieved 21 March 2015.

 Faust, Miriam (2012). The Handbook of the Neuropsychology of Language. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 941–43. ISBN 978-1-4443-3040-3. Archived from the original on 9 January 2017.