If we look at the structure or anatomy of the learning disability known as dyslexia, we find that this sequence of development occurs: 1. The individual encounters an unrecognized stimulus. This could be a word (written or spoken), a symbol or an object that is not recognized. 2. The lack of recognition causes a confusion which stimulates disorientation. The individual uses disorientation to mentally examine the stimulus from different points of view, in an attempt to bring about recognition. This usually works with real-life objects, but doesn’t work at all with language, because it is composed of sonic or written symbols for ideas and concepts. 3. The disorientation causes the assimilation of incorrect data. The perspectives the individual examines mentally are registered in the brain as actual perceptions. Most of these perceptions are inaccurate. 4. The assimilation of incorrect data causes the individual to make mistakes. The individual cannot distinguish between correct and incorrect data, because both are registered in the brain as actual perceptions. The resulting mistakes are usually the first “symptoms” of dyslexia. 5. The mistakes cause emotional reactions. No one likes making mistakes. The individual is simply experiencing a human reaction. This, in turn, causes teachers and parents to react negatively. 6. Emotional reactions bring about frustration. The frustration is a result of the cumulative effects of mistakes and emotional reactions, compounded by the negative responses of other people. 7. Solutions are created or adopted to solve the problems stemming from the use of disorientation in the recognition process. These solutions will be methods of seeming to know things or of performing tasks. Each will have worked at least once, and will be a compulsive behavior. The person will use it without even noticing. These “old solutions” usually begin to accumulate at around age nine. 8. The learning disability is composed of the compulsive solutions the individual acquires. Compulsive solutions are mental crutches, rote memorizations, tricks or gimmicks the person uses to give the appearance of understanding. They have little if anything to do with actually learning or gaining understanding of the material studied. 9. These compulsive solutions are what disable the learning process. By using compulsive solutions, a person might learn to “read” the way a parrot learns to talk—without any understanding of the content. Through a few more roundabout mental processes, the person might be able to decipher some of the meaning of the material that is read. But using these solutions is a tedious process. With this anatomy as a base, we can assess for the characteristics of the mental functions that eventually produce various levels of dyslexia: the ability to do nonverbal conceptualization and the ability to disorient the perceptions.
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The Gift of Dyslexia: Why Some of The Smartest People Can’t Read and How They Can Learn