Students Who Learn Differently
It is very appropriate that this study was introduced in Greece for two reasons. The first has to do with the fact that the great Athenian philosopher, Socrates, adopted the Delphic saying, "know thyself" as his personal motto. By learning more about how we learn, we indeed learn more about ourselves. The second reason is because the word "dyslexia" comes from the Greek, "dys" meaning "difficulty" and "lexis" meaning "language and letters." At last count, there were at least 86 different definitions of dyslexia, and most of these were exclusionary. It's not this, it's not that, it's not the other thing, so we'll call it dyslexia. However, most people agree that it involves difficulty with the perception and/or execution of written, and sometimes spoken, language.
ADD/HD is short for Attention Deficit Disorder/Hyperactivity Disorder. These are conditions that are characterized by problems with sustaining attention, controlling impulses and responding appropriately in different situations.
What are Some of the Symptoms?
Symptoms for dyslexia and ADD/HD are being listed together because it happens that some students can experience both to a greater or lesser extent. Indeed, many people group these phenomena together under the heading of specific learning difficulties. Although the behaviors and types of treatment might be different, very often recommended mainstream teaching methods and parental support are quite similar for both.
It is important to be aware of these signs because early recognition can lead to early and effective remedial treatment and the prevention of damage to the self-esteem of the student. The following indicators are taken from a pamphlet entitled, Dyslexia Your First Questions Answered, prepared by Anna McNair Scott for the British Dyslexia Association:
- later than expected clear speech and a persistent tendency to jumble words and phrases
- persistent difficulty with tasks such as dressing efficiently, doing up buttons, tying shoelaces
- unusual clumsiness and difficulty with co-ordinated activities such as hopping and skipping, and catching or kicking balls
- poor concentration
- family history of similar difficulties.1
In answer to the question, "can anything be done before school age?", Ms. Scott recommends finding detailed suggestions by reading "Early Help, Better Future," by Jean Augur which is available from the British Dyslexia Association (see Useful Addresses).
- reversal of letters and numbers
- poor spelling
- mirror writing
- inability to read aloud easily, continued difficulty with speech
- always getting lost
- difficulty in telling the time
- lack of skill in sports
- difficulty telling left from right
- inattention
- lack of reading comprehension
- inability to finish work in a given time
- lack of organization at home and at school
- difficulty in copying from the blackboard or a text book
- difficulty remembering or writing down oral instructions
This is by no means an exhaustive list of the possible manifestations of dyslexia or ADD/HD, but it should give some idea of what you might expect.
Factors that Might Complicate Recognition
Because learning-differently students look just like any other students, for this reason you can sometimes hear their problem referred to as a "hidden disability." And because it is hidden, it often goes undiagnosed.
- Sometimes the symptoms of both dyslexia and ADD/HD are just a part of the maturation process and are something that children will naturally outgrow as they become older. But if the symptoms persist, if you and/or your child are feeling uneasy for any length of time, you should consider getting an assessment done. Sometimes well-meaning teachers will attempt to reassure you that there really isn't a problem, it's just a case of growing up. Other teachers might give you the feeling that you are over-reacting and are an overanxious parent. But you know your children best. You know when they are thriving or not. Follow your instinct.
- It could be possible that one or both parents might not recognize or deny that there is any problem. There is clear evidence that both dyslexia and ADD/HD tend to run in families. Therefore, it could be quite natural for the parents not to think that there is any problem because the child is acting and/or developing in more or less the same way that they did. One FAWCO mother recounts: He was the brightest kid in the class and kept discussions going but his daily work was incomplete and messy and we were told that he wasn't working up to potential. This worried my husband, who'd always heard the same, but was sure that his very dysfunctional family was to blame . . . Then my best friend came to visit. She's a student councilor at our old high school, specializes in learning disabilities and has ADD - it runs in her family. She spotted it right away; that kid's ADD. We talked a lot about it, also with our husbands. Hers knew about his ADD, for mine it was a revelation."
Sometimes problems arise in families when one parent thinks or recognizes that there is a problem, and the other parent can't see it. It is not unknown for students themselves to recognize that they have a problem. One of their hardest tasks can be to convince their parents.
- Another factor that might prohibit early recognition is the often superior intelligence of the student. Often many of our learning-differently students are able to cope in elementary school, only to find that the different teaching methods and different requirements of the last six grades do not permit them to succeed. Because they were successful before, very often parents and teachers begin to label the student lazy or inattentive, epitaphs that are counter-productive to say the least.
- Problems are sometimes blamed on the fact that the student is living overseas or is a member of a dual-cultural family. Therefore, learning difficulties are sometimes seen as being cause by:
- adjustment to moving away from friends and extended family
- the shock of adjusting to a new culture
- the possible necessity of having to learn a new language
- the fact that the child is being brought up bilingually
The following is from a first person account of a FAWCO mother:
When my son began to read in the host country language, I was concerned by his reluctance to read and his difficulties parsing words when he did read. New to the country and unable to speak much of the host country language myself, I wasn't exactly sure how to proceed within the school system. My son was suffering from hearing difficulties, culture shock and reading difficulties in Kindergarten and also in the first and second grades. My husband attributed his inability to read well to the foreign language and to our son's hearing loss. As I had studied some linguistics and am a language teacher by training, I felt the problem was dyslexia.
Subsequent assessment found this to be the case, and eventually the child did receive special help.
Physical Evidence
In its article on this year's meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, The Economist wrote ". . . dyslexia is essentially an inability to deal with linguistic information in visual form." 2 The articles goes on to consider various physical manifestations of dyslexia such as the fact that the anatomy of a dyslexic brain is slightly different in subtle ways from that of a non-dyslexic, when asked to perform certain tasks like reading while in an fMRI scanner, the electrical activity is different in the scans of dyslexics and non-dyslexics, and that more and more evidence is being found that links dyslexia with certain genes.
To further lend physical evidence to the fact that dyslexic brains can be retrained or taught to learn such tasks as reading, doctors at Wake Forest School of Medicine in North Carolina conducted some experiments using fMRI scanning:
. . . This institution specializes in dyslexia, and Dr. Eden and Dr. Zeffiro were able to borrow some of its patients and stick them in the fMRI machine at Georgetown University. They did so before and after the individuals involved had been on an intensive program designed to improve their reading. They also scanned the brains of some control dyslexics who were not on the program.
The results are intriguing. After the program, those enrolled showed enhanced brain activity while reading. This activity was not, however, on the left-hand side. Instead, it was in areas on the right-hand side exactly corresponding to the language centers in the opposite hemisphere. The reading program had somehow "recruited" suitable batches of nerve cells in a place not normally associated with language processing. 3
The article concludes with some thought provoking suggestions:
. . . It looks as if it (dyslexia) may have a profoundly biological origin and genetic roots. Yet viewed in another light, its cause is almost purely environmental. People brought up in illiterate societies are hardly troubled by the other symptoms (behavioral differences). It was the invention of writing, not mutations of the genes that caused the difficulty. Nature or nurture? Take your pick. 4
Space Dyslexia:
Recently there has been quite a bit of news in the British press concerning diagnostic methods and treatments for dyslexia that are being developed because of research that has been done by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Here are some examples of these news items:
Children who spend just three weeks on the exercise program (developed for the astronauts) show astonishing improvements in their reading and writing. Staff at the pioneering treatment Center in Warwickshire (at the Dyslexia, Dyspraxia and Attention Treatment Center in Kenilworth, England) claim that 97 per cent of them show "significant" results after three months.
This month a research program will be launched at the clinic to test out its claims. The project will be overseen by Professor David Reynolds of Exeter University, former chairman of the (British) Government's numeracy task force. 5
The BBC Online News reported on a new test to spot dyslexia that also comes from the DDAT Center:
The first ever mass screening of schoolchildren for dyslexia has been carried out in the borough of Solihull using a revolutionary computer program designed originally for the space program.
The guinea pigs were some 450 pupils at Balsall Common Primary School who took a 90-second test where they watched a dot travel around the edge of a computer screen and clicked the mouse each time it changed shape.
"It just measures their ability to concentrate and to track something in a fine detailed way," explains Wynford Dore, the businessman who founded the DDAT Center. 6
And then there is the case of the "Girl who beat dyslexia with tablets for travel-sick spacemen:"
A ten-year-old dyslexic girl has rocketed to the top of her class thanks to a space-age treatment. Jessica Foulston started taking travel pills after experts discovered links between dyslexia and the temporary learning difficulties astronauts suffer in space. Spacemen overcome the problem by taking motion sickness pills, and a New York psychiatrist believes the same remedy helps dyslexics.
Before starting his treatment, Jessica was reading books for five-year-olds - now she can read novels aimed at her own range. She has also become one of the best maths pupils in her class.
Previous research into dyslexia suggested the condition was caused by a defect in the language-processing part of the brain. But Dr. Levinson has spent the last thirty years working on his theory that the inner ear and cerebellum - which control balance and co-ordination - are linked to the learning difficulty. 7
However, evidently NASA was unaware that it was involved any of these projects. The following comes from the NASA website, under their Frequently Asked Questions section:
I heard that NASA has a treatment for dyslexia, how can I get more information?
Due to recent articles in the British press, namely "The Independent", that describe a new treatment for dyslexia that utilizes "Space research, in the form of computerized balance tests given to returning astronauts and corrective exercises that reintroduce stability after weightlessness", we have received numerous requests for information concerning this research.
In response, the Acting NASA Chief Health and Medical Officer, Richard S. Williams MD, has issued the following statement:
"In our experience, the prolonged exposure of Astronauts to the microgravity
environment of space flight does not give rise to any physical symptoms or signs that would suggest dyslexia. To the best of our knowledge, NASA is not funding or engaging in research concerning dyslexia. Similarly, we do not have (or are unaware of) evidence that any of our medical or rehabilitative interventions for the Astronauts might be effective in treating dyslexia." 8Last March Hillary Rodham Clinton announced a new, $5 million, governmental study by the National Institute of Mental Health on the use of medications like Ritalin and Prozac by children under the age of 7. She said that she didn't mean to "bash" these drugs, but she felt that their increased use did raise some troubling questions.
"When it comes to drug treatments for children, why are we seeing such great variations by community and race?" Mrs. Clinton said at a news conference. "And what effects do over-use and under-use of these medications have on our children? 9
The National Institute of Health published its longitudinal study results on the use of Ritalin in 1999 according to an article in the New York Times:
In one of the largest studies of its kind ever conducted, researchers have found that the drug Ritalin, the subject of sharp debate for three decades, was more effective than behavior-modification therapy in treating children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The researchers, who worked at six sites around the country in teams assembled by the National Institutes of Health, said that adding the behavioral therapy to Ritalin treatment was no more effective than the drug alone.
But they said they found that about 70 percent of the children they studied also turned out to have problems like depression and anxiety. In those cases, behavior therapy provided significant benefits, especially when used in combination with the Ritalin. 10
Richard Lavoie, the creator of those award-winning videos, also has a monthly column on the LDOnline website. In March 2001, he discussed the difference between ADD recognition in boys and girls:
Most of the early ADD research was conducted exclusively with boys. The field is now beginning to recognize and debate the fundamental gender differences in ADD. My experience has clearly shown that girls are often under-identified in school systems ... while boys may be over identified.
I have long felt that this discrepancy is due to the manner in which boys and girls respond to school failure. Boys tend to act out, misbehave, become defiant or aggressive. Girls tend to respond to failure by becoming withdrawn and passive. (Of course, there are notable exceptions!) Therefore, the boy tends to be referred for intervention ... and the girl is ignored and granted social promotions. We need to start taking better care of our little girls!
Girls are less likely to become OPPOSITIONAL or AGGRESSIVE than boys. ADD girls are also less likely to be HYPERACTIVE or have concurrent LEARNING DISABILITIES.
Girls tend to have ADD ... without hyperactivity. Boys more often have ADHD ...wherein hyperactivity is a significant aspect of the problem.
ADD (without hyperactivity) students are generally characterized by introversion, unfocussed, difficulty attending, low energy. The ADD girl is often (unfairly and inaccurately) labeled "ditzy", "scattered", "flaky". 11
New treatments for ADHD:
Over 300 hospitals and clinics in the United States are using a new technique to help people with ADHD. The therapy involves the use of a head set and a metronome. CNN reports:
One of those therapies (to help with ADHD) involves performing various tasks -- clapping, tapping the foot -- to the beat of a metronome.
The technique originated with Tom Eggleston, whose 14-year-old son Jimmy has ADHD. Eggleston noted that Jimmy seemed to improve after taking piano lessons with a metronome.
He was so impressed, he started a company, Interactive Metronome, to market a metronome device as an ADHD treatment tool.
The new research, published in the American Journal of Occupational Therapy, appears to bear out Eggleston's experience. Fifty-six boys took part in the study.
"Their attention improved, their motor planning and sequencing improved. They had improvement in selected academic skills involving reading and some math capacities," said Dr. Stanley Greenspan, a child psychiatrist who conducted the research. Greenspan is also an advisor to Interactive Metronome.
Not all ADHD specialists are convinced. They say the study was too small to draw conclusions and point out that children who used the metronome did little better than those who played video games instead. 12
However, many parents have reported good results by combining this new therapy with existing treatments.
New Drug:
The Federal Drug Administration has approved a new drug to treat ADHD. Concerta (methylphenidate) has the advantage over similar drugs in the fact that it needs to be taken only once a day. This eliminates the necessity for the child having to see the school nurse, which can cause embarrassment, or asking the teacher to administer the pills. 13
1Scott, Anna McNair. Dyslexia Your First Questions Answered. The British Dyslexia Association. Reading. 1995. page 3.
2 Science and Technology. "Reading Minds." The Economist. p. 91
3 Ibid. p. 92
4 Ibid.
5 Berliner, Wendy. "Dyslexia will be eradicated 'by the end of the decade.'" The Independent. January 11, 2001.
6 Interview by Wynford Dore. "New test may spot dyslexia." BBC Birmingham Online News. Thursday, 11th December, 2000.
7 "Girl who beat dyslexia with tablets for travel-sick spacemen." Daily Mail. Thursday, December 28, 2000. http://www.dyslexia-add.co.uk
8 http://spaceresearch.nasa.gov/faq.html#dysl, April 22, 2001.
9 Reuters. "U.S. to Review Child Drugs." International Herald Tribune. Tuesday, March 21, 2000. p. 3.
10 Nobel, Holcomb B. "Ritalin": NIH Longitudinal Study Results. New York Times. December 1999.
11 Lavoie, Richard. "Ask Rick." March 2001. http://www.ldlonline.org
12 Roland, Rhonda, CNN Medical Correspondent. "Metronome said to help ADHD." March 9, 2001. http://www.cnn.com
13 Holt, Gary, HelthScout Reporter. "FDA Approvals: Concerta for ADHD." Yahoo! Health News. November 7, 2000. http://www.yahoo.com
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Students Who Learn Differently
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