Reading is like overcoming a tribulation. Perhaps it is this "disease" that is causing the problem.

Review expert: Yin Tielun, deputy chief physician of the Department of Neurology, Airport Branch, Peking University Third Hospital

When you were a student, you probably met a classmate like this: he or she had good grades in some subjects, but was very bad at Chinese. He or she couldn’t read the text fluently or do reading comprehension. He or she had studied hard, but why didn’t he or she see any results? In fact, this may not be because they didn’t study hard, but because they may have “reading difficulties”.

What is dyslexia?

Reading plays an irreplaceable role in shaping our outlook on life, values, world view and personal excellence, and plays an important role in the process of human development and progress. However, some people are troubled by dyslexia, which not only makes their Chinese language scores unsatisfactory, but also affects their learning of other subjects. So, what exactly is dyslexia?

Dyslexia is a specific form of learning disability caused by neurological problems. It is relatively common in life and is divided into two forms according to the causes: one is acquired dyslexia , which is caused by acquired brain damage, especially damage to the brain area related to reading; the other is developmental dyslexia , the causes of developmental dyslexia are more complicated, and it is often manifested in the education level, learning experience, and intelligence that are no different from those of peers but still show persistent dyslexia.

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The specific behavioral manifestations of dyslexia include: difficulty in spelling, decoding and vocabulary recognition, difficulty distinguishing similar characters and homophonic characters, difficulty understanding the meaning of a certain character in a word or article, difficulty forming sentences, only being able to copy but not being able to express in words or difficulty understanding what is copied, difficulty recalling what is read, etc.

How does dyslexia develop?

According to the different causes of dyslexia, dyslexia is divided into acquired dyslexia and developmental dyslexia. As mentioned above, the cause of acquired dyslexia is acquired brain damage, especially the acquired damage to the brain area related to reading. The cause of developmental dyslexia is not single, and its cause has always been controversial. There is no consensus yet. The mainstream view is that auditory processing disorder, slow visual response and spatial attention disorder are its main causes.

There are three main manifestations of auditory processing disorder: poor phonetic awareness, slow retrieval of speech from memory, and poor short-term memory.

Auditory processing mainly involves voice information, which is the core of reading. When students have poor phonetic awareness and cannot consciously receive, process and store voice, they will have difficulty in reading. Reading requires constant association with memories already stored in the mind, and when the speed of retrieval of these long-term memories is slower than that of ordinary people, they will often show symptoms of dyslexia. The reading process is more about rapid, short-term memory of words, phrases and sentences in voice information, and students with poor short-term memory will encounter the dilemma of "forgetting the previous sentence after reading the next sentence", which will eventually lead to dyslexia.

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The reading process requires us to have visual reactions, and quickly make preliminary reactions in our minds to the article paragraphs we see in order to obtain key information. However, students with slow visual reactions often find it difficult to obtain information through vision in a timely manner. This "congenital word blindness" further leads to reading difficulties.

Spatial attention disorder can be understood as the ability to quickly locate the target paragraph in an article through vision and attention. Defects in this process may lead to reading difficulties.

Ways to improve dyslexia

For some students, dyslexia may even continue into adulthood, adversely affecting their life and work. Therefore, timely intervention should be carried out to address the defects of dyslexic people in vision, hearing, concentration, cognitive perception, spatial disorders, etc., so as to improve dyslexia as soon as possible.

Behavioral intervention is currently the only method that can effectively alleviate dyslexia. The behavioral intervention methods that can be used for reference are:

The first is visual support: such as strengthening students' visual-spatial sequence training to alleviate problems such as reversing the order, adding or subtracting words when reading. In addition, Chinese characters are ideographic, and character learning mostly relies on direct visual memory. When intervening, focus on the splitting of radicals and the visual method of recognizing characters. Such visual training can effectively alleviate students' reading difficulties.

Split word recognition method

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Second, reading reinforcement: so-called reading reinforcement is to consolidate and strengthen the words, sentences and paragraphs of students with dyslexia, so as to alleviate their problems such as slow reading speed and reversed order when reading aloud. For example, repeatedly reading concise and meaningful articles or paragraphs can improve their reading fluency, reading aloud articles or sentences that they are interested in can alleviate the problem of reversed order when reading aloud, and gradually alleviate dyslexia. In addition, accelerated reading, audio book intervention and other methods can also effectively alleviate dyslexia.

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The third is speech intervention: Most students with dyslexia have speech problems, and speech intervention for students with dyslexia should be strengthened. For example, using music for speech intervention can alleviate speech disorders by training students' perception and memory of music rhythm, pitch, melody and lyrics, and enhance students' ability to recognize, understand and recall, thereby improving dyslexia.

Fourth, increase the interest and readability of the text: Dyslexia often causes students to fear and resist reading, so it is crucial to stimulate students' interest in reading. For example, computers and other auxiliary tools can be used to add animations and pictures that aid understanding, thereby improving the monotony and dullness of the text.

The fifth is the exercise intervention method: exercise intervention is mainly aimed at people with developmental dyslexia. It aims to change the structure and function of the brain through physical exercise, such as electronic action games, to promote brain development, alleviate memory defects, rapid naming defects, learning ability defects, language defects, attention defects and other problems, thereby alleviating the symptoms of dyslexia and helping to improve reading speed and concentration.

Electronic action games

Source: pexels

Although the research on the mechanism and intervention of dyslexia is still immature, the public's attention to this issue is increasing. It is expected that in the near future, people with reading problems can wander freely among words.