#1: Dyslexia is Common
Dyslexia is more prevalent than you may think. Around 20,000 primary and secondary school students are affected by the disorder locally. Based on statistics from the Dyslexia Association of Singapore, this works out to a rate of between 4% to 10%.
#2: Dyslexia Runs in Family
Dyslexia is a learning difficulty that is passed on through genes. This means that a child is more likely to be affected if his parents or siblings have dyslexia too. Therefore, it is always a good idea to screen siblings of children with the disorder because of their increased likelihood of having it as well.
#3: Dyslexia Causes Trouble with Both Reading and Spelling
Children with dyslexia often have difficulty with processing speech sounds and with learning the alphabets. They also face issues with linking the sound of alphabets to their written form.
Since writing is the process of transcribing sound to its written form and reading is about decoding the written word, these two skills are therefore impaired.
#4: Problems with Reading Comprehension
In order to understand a text, you first need to be able to read it. Therefore, it follows that dyslexic children are likely to face challenges in reading comprehension since they have problems with decoding text.
However, children with milder forms of dyslexia may be able to compensate for their reading difficulties by deriving meaning from context or filling in the blanks with their vocabulary. These children usually have an above average IQ and most importantly, good spoken language skills.
#5: Dyslexia is Not Caused by Left-Handedness
Strangely, there is a common myth that dyslexia is caused by being left-handed or crossed or mixed-lateral (for example, being right handed but left eyed). However, research thus far has failed to find causality in these conditions. Neither has changing handedness been found to cause dyslexia.
However, research did find some correlation between handedness and dyslexia (i.e. “dyseidetic” dyslexies are more likely to be right-handed while “phonological” dyslexies are more likely to be left-handed than the general population) .
#6: Children with Dyslexia have Problems Remembering Serial Orders
The difficulties that children with dyslexia face are also compounded by another issue: short term memory for serial order. The process of reading requires the child to hold the decoded sounds in short term memory and then to present them in the correct order for processing. Therefore, it follows that a difficulty in this area will affect their ability to understand the letters on the page.
#7: Children with Dyslexia Often Have other Difficulties too
Dyslexia often co-occurs with other significant learning difficulties. These include persistent language problems, motor and non-verbal difficulties, including clumsiness, maths problems and attention issues.
Studies have shown that up to 70 per cent of children with dyslexia have one or more of these learning problems as well.
In particular, many children with dyslexia do poorly in math because dyslexia has an impact on the verbal aspects of number processing. They find it challenging to memorise number names, count slowly and are prone to mistakes when doing calculations. Recalling math facts like multiplication tables is also hard for them.
To top it off, more than one third of children with dyslexia suffer from attention problems as well.
#8: Many Famous People have Dyslexia
Not all dyslexics have some special talent or skill. Indeed, the intelligence range of children with dyslexia is similar to that of the non-dyslexic population.
But this is not to say that there are no dyslexic individuals with exceptional abilities. Some notable people with dyslexia are Sir Richard Branson and Tom Cruise. In fact, even our very own Lee Kuan Yew had claimed to suffer from mild dyslexia.
