How Dyslexics Read

I've been thinking a lot lately about how dyslexics, expecially stealth dyslexics, read. For example, The man that owns the house next door to us is a spine surgeon in Fl. He told me that he is very dyslexic and had trouble learning to read. He says that now though, he can read any medical journal or medical literature and have no trouble at all. But, he said he would not be able to read Hemingway if he tried. It makes me think that he is reading whole words and once he learns them, somehow he brains works with it.

Another friend of our said he out grew it, but I wonder if he just knows all the words in his reading interest and work areas.

It makes sense to me in how I read, I read fine until I get to a word I don't know. Does anyone have any insight? Thanks, Chris

2 members like this

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by dhfl143 on December 21, 2009 at 10:27pm

Could it be that once a word has been impressed upon your long term memory -- it is there and it has stuck? Thus, there is no longer a need to decode the word because it has transferred from short term to long term memory. Could it be that it has become part of your vocabulary and you instantly recognize it? I think that might account for why some dyslexics become very proficient at reading within a specific discipline -- particularly jargon terms.

I have seen this with my own daughter and husband -- in that their fluency and word recognition have greatly increased through listening to digital books, especially in areas or domains that are of high-interest to them.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Christine Johnson on December 22, 2009 at 7:11am

I should clarify though. I can read the word, and know what it means, but my fluency is not that great, meaning, it is like I have imput slowness. I talked to another woman who has this same issue. When she was in high school she would read the english book like the Scarlet Letter 4 or 5 times to get it. I would start reading and get frustrated with such a book and end up skimming through and somehow get a B on the test and essay somehow in my college bound classes..

I am now downloading books from RFBD and other sources and listening while I am reading to them as I read to try and help my fluency.

Looking back, the fluency issue really hit me hard in college.

dhfl143 said:

Could it be that once a word has been impressed upon your long term memory -- it is there and it has stuck? Thus, there is no longer a need to decode the word because it has transferred from short term to long term memory. Could it be that it has become part of your vocabulary and you instantly recognize it? I think that might account for why some dyslexics become very proficient at reading within a specific discipline -- particularly jargon terms.

I have seen this with my own daughter and husband -- in that their fluency and word recognition have greatly increased through listening to digital books, especially in areas or domains that are of high-interest to them.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Drs. Fernette and Brock Eide on January 1, 2010 at 11:06am

This is a little off topic, but I was just talking to Brock the other day about authors that dyslexics like to read. Our daughter has mild dyslexia - and although she likes the fantasy genre and talking animals, she couldn't get into Redwall because the author spent what she said was too much time describing what was seen...lots of adjectives. Brock says he never likes high-adjective authors - because adjectives are read before you get to the noun - so you don't even know what they're talking about.

Karina likes action and dialogue -and events conveyed through the 'color' of speech - how things are said, etc.

Our whole family preferred C.S. Lewis for instance (? dyslexic, was a bad speller and bad at math) over Tolkien.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by monday on January 6, 2010 at 7:44pm

My children, both of whom have dyslexia, are amazingly fast silent readers for novels, with good understanding. I have wondered if there is something about reading the whole word by sight and making up a word that fits if they cannot sight read the word that speeds them along. Even though I am a good reader and had no difficutlies learning to read, I can hear the words in my head as I read them and that seems to slow me down

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Ilene Goldman on January 18, 2010 at 5:58am

I find this very interesting. I have always had an easier time reading novels/fiction than reading non-fiction. For me, most non-fiction is very difficult to read. I wonder if this may be due to the fact that with fiction I can picture the story, like a movie, in my head, and I can also infer what is going to happen next. With non-fiction, it is just a bunch of boring words to me.

I also have a problem reading novels that are very wordy and descriptive like Michner or Hemingway. I get lost in all the adjectives. I never thought about this being a dyslexic issue, but it seems like it is. Everyday I learn that another of my problems/issues are dyslexic in nature. I wish I knew all this when I was young; I may have been able to work through it then instead of just giving up and thinking that I was dumb.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by monday on January 18, 2010 at 7:35am

I appreciate your insight into the reading process. It is very difficult to get my daughter age 13 to read her textbooks. I thought is was because she is still working to decode some of the words but I can see how it may be related to your comments on understading with imagery. My daughter loves reading, mostly action and dialogue, as Fernette said about her daughter. She is also a wonderful creative writer and artist. She describes the movie in her head that you refer to. I will try more to encourage my daughter to use visualizing and art-based concept maps in her study of geography, history, and science. Thank you

Ilene Goldman said:

I find this very interesting. I have always had an easier time reading novels/fiction than reading non-fiction. For me, most non-fiction is very difficult to read. I wonder if this may be due to the fact that with fiction I can picture the story, like a movie, in my head, and I can also infer what is going to happen next. With non-fiction, it is just a bunch of boring words to me.

I also have a problem reading novels that are very wordy and descriptive like Michner or Hemingway. I get lost in all the adjectives. I never thought about this being a dyslexic issue, but it seems like it is. Everyday I learn that another of my problems/issues are dyslexic in nature. I wish I knew all this when I was young; I may have been able to work through it then instead of just giving up and thinking that I was dumb.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Christine Johnson on January 18, 2010 at 9:06am

My son says it is like a movie in his head when he reads. His most aware teacher told me that he "has no learning style." that he does everthing his own way and just gets it.

I asked him about it afterwards and he said that he sees no pictures, sees no words, and hears no words. It's like a state of being. That he able to pull it up and add to it or change it and the next time he pulls it up it is in its new state.

A couple of weeks ago he had left a sheet of 20 questions for a snow science class at a friend's house where he had done his homework. He insisted that he didn't need it because he remembered everything. So I quizzed him by asking him like what was question #2? His eyes looked up for about 2 seconds then he told me the question, whether he answered it (they were only required to answer half) what his answer was, what the book said if he didn't anwer it, or whether he agreed with or not.

It is interesting because my daughter says she thinks that way also. She is also more compliant in school and He is resistive. She is the "model student" and he has been labled as having a "non compliant attitude" or "bad attitude"" She struggles to excel and he can sit in a class, refuse to take notes, and ace the test.

All so wierd and confusing and I think I think the same way.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by dhfl143 on January 22, 2010 at 7:12am

My daughter also prefers fictional works to non-fiction. She is very intuitive and like Karina enjoys action, intrigue and dialogue. Non-fiction is usally harder because many times it is about reguritating some arbitrary fact rather than the main context -- which can be challenging.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by David Cardew on February 18, 2010 at 7:31am

I was wondering about how the style of writing affects reading.
I fined that if there is no pace in a story, my mined wonders off easily.

I think as a kid I used to prefer technical know how or to do books, with pictures, I think because the out come was known and the information backed it up.
With storeys you have to get through the hole book to know what it is about.
I all so probably wanted to look like I was reading books higher than my reading ability.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by karen on March 5, 2010 at 9:46am

I can read Hemingway, and I'm dyslexic. How I do it, I started as a child wanting to read very badly, but I couldn't. No one could help me. I decided to fix the problem myself. I didn't fix it, really, I just adapted. I read each word by painstackingly (spell that) sounding them out. It took me forever, but I was determined. I was tired of being the "stupid" kid in class. Plus, strangly, I loved books. It was a love/hate thing. I love to visualize the stories. I hate to put the letters together. Anyway, I read slowly (I still read slowly). If I came to a word I didn't know, I skipped it. I would figure out the sentence by the rest of the words: I read for content. After years and years and years of reading, I'm pretty good. Still slow. So, I would say lots of practice. Funny, I read at home all the time, but reading at school was the hard part. I wanted to be left alone with my books. Reading outload is the hardest. I mix up the phonems (spell that). I can't figure out which is sweet or sweat without looking them up in the dictionary to be sure that I used the right one.

I remember reading that first book. I would sound out the word and not get it. I would maybe understand one word out of each sentence. So it went like this: Teh man aety. He ikle food. I would then think, o, man, and something about food. After years of practice with literally hundreds of books, I get get 99% of the words on the page. Anyway, that's me everyone is different.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Shla Bee on December 1, 2011 at 11:48pm

Quite an interesting discussion going here.....

My 10yo enjoys books though he is dyslexic too! And Karen (above), you sound just like him. He has a love/hate relationship with books. He wants to read it to visualise it but its hard putting the letters together....

He loves fiction and non-fiction but trully enjoys non-fiction more.....
Anyway, I have realised that its like he has better days reading than other days.....Could it be the font and the size that the book is written in that makes it easier too?

He has been enjoying reading on the ipad because he can enlarge the text and change the background colour too.....

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Davis W. Graham on December 25, 2011 at 8:29pm

Dear Chris;

Thank you for your question, I read with four programs, one which I read your post with is Readplease, then to read books I use two programs, Read:OutLoud and Read2Go for portability both use books supplied by Bookshare.org. Then the last one which I use occasionally, Balabolka, this program can go the fastest and I occasionally use it to read contracts, it can read up to 510 words per minute. Normally I read btw 340 to 380 wpm, if I go slower my mind will drift.

Bookshare.org and Read:OutLoud, turning a book into a virtual book which is great when reading a book and enables you to data mind persons, places or things which I don't know or want to know more about.