Word Blindness: The Definition Of Dyslexia

Word blindness. Those were the words that the condition that we now know as dyslexia was first called when Dr. W. Pringle published a report in the British Medical Journal in 1896 in which he wrote about a 14-year-old male that was of high intelligence but lacked the ability to read (Dyslexia, 2016). Dyslexia is typically defined as a learning disorder that is characterized by difficulty reading caused by problems identifying speech sounds and learning how those speech sounds relate to letters and words (Staff, 2014). Other sources also loop in the lack of the ability to spell. Although there are few studies about dyslexia, there is a wide range of definitions that continue to expand what dyslexia is. Most definitions of dyslexia include …show more content…
Quite the opposite is true. Dyslexia occurs in children and adults with normal vision and intelligence that ranges from typical to high intelligence. In some cases, dyslexia is undiagnosed for years and is not recognized until adulthood (Staff, 2016). Dyslexia does not have a cure. It is a lifelong condition that is believed to be caused by traits that are inherited. These inherited traits affect how the brain works and is the reason why dyslexia is believed to be a neurological or neurobiological condition (Dyslexia, 2016). Most individuals with dyslexia can succeed in school with the help of tutors, emotional support, and/or a specialized education program. The severity of dyslexia varies from person to person. Many children with dyslexia can be taught to read with the help of special instructional techniques. Often beneficial is the so-called multisensory approach to learning, which involves simultaneously hearing, seeing, and touching. Many children and adults with dyslexia develop into highly productive individuals by finding ways to work around their reading difficulty by using aides such as audiotaping lectures, using flashcards to help learn new things, and taking advantage of the spelling and grammar-checking capabilities of computer word-processing programs. “Assistive technology,” including scanners, speech synthesizers, speech-to-text printouts, and the like, can also