October is Dyslexia Awareness Month!
3 Quick overviews that will help You understand Dyslexia
1. Dyslexia Has a Genetic Component
Some family members have had dyslexia, which raises the chances their youngest will develop it as well. Fifty percent (50%) of children with a sibling or parent with dyslexia will receive the diagnosis themselves (Gaab, 2017). Scientists have identified several specific genes that are strongly associated with dyslexia, making those who carry them predisposed to developing it.
To be clear, there’s no such thing as “the dyslexia gene” that determines a child’s fate. And genetic factors are just one type of underlying factors that lead to dyslexia. The multiple deficit approach to dyslexia is now considered the most accurate way to understand causation. In addition to genetic factors, dyslexia is a result of brain-level differences, perceptual/cognitive-level differences, and environmental factors. The most effective and cost-efficient interventions consider multiple dimensions.
2. Dyslexia Involves a Disconnect between Sight and Sound
Researchers have mapped out the regions of the brain that are activated during the act of reading. This network that makes up the reading brain includes the visual word form (VWFA) in the occipitotemporal regions. The VWFA connects the syllables and words you hear to the letters and words you see on the page–an important cognitive task for the reading process.
Because the dyslexia marker, the difficulty in linking speech sound perception and visual word recognition, exists earlier in the speech processing stream, an important target of early intervention in children at risk for dyslexia should be to develop the brain’s ability for auditory processing. The only reading intervention that is deliberately designed to develop both auditory processing and the standard pillars of reading skills is the Fast ForWord software
3. Dyslexia Comes with Strengths
It’s important to remember that although reading may not come easily to learners with dyslexia, these bright individuals offer different talents and skills.
Attend this Webinar to:-
- Discover the latest research on cognitive, genetic, and processing differences associated with dyslexia.
- Learn about new research on early identification.
- Learn about brain-based proven interventions that enable learners with dyslexia to reach their highest potential.
About the Speaker
Dr. Martha Burns is an Adjunct Associate Professor at Northwestern University and has authored three books and over 100 journal articles on the neuroscience of language and communication. Dr. Burns’ expertise is in all areas related to the neuroscience of learning, such as language and reading in the brain, the bilingual brain, the language to literacy continuum, and the adolescent brain. Dr. Martha Burns is a Fellow of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association and the Director of Neuroscience Education for Scientific Learning Corporation.
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