Linguistic and nonlinguistic causes of reading difficulties

Linguistic and Nonlinguistic Causes of why an Individual may have Difficulties in Reading.

Linguistic causes of why an individual may have difficulties in reading

The causes

Auditory language related impairment - some individuals with reading difficulty have deficiency in distinguishing differences in sound. In a similar way, some individuals may have difficulty in detecting tones within noise

Visual magnocellular-Deficit hypothesis - impairment in visual processing system may lead some word to seem incoherent and to confuse stumbling readers

Neural - Aside from deficiency in the visual and the auditory system, imaging studies show that readers have processing deficits in the cerebellum, as well as having smaller lobes in the cerebellum compared to non-dyslexic participants.

Memory deficits

Characteristics a student may display

Delay in speaking- starting with speech older than the general age of 12 months

Difficulties with pronunciation -- often mixing syllables and omitting beginning syllables

Difficulty in learning the letters of the alphabet

Recalling incorrect phonemes -- such as seeing the image of a donkey and saying "dog'

Insensitivity to rhyme -- difficulty recognizing rhyming sounds

Research

Neuroimaging shows that some reading impairment may be reduced to developmental dyslexia where, for instance, the brain confuses letters because they sound alike (rather than dyslexia being simply a visual problem), or the brain has difficulties, along a spectrum, in either the memory, motor and cognitive systems. The brain imperfectly visualizes and divides letters. Poor readers use different neural pathways than effective readers, and defective readers moreover rely on Broca's area for decoding text. Not only do dyslexic brains work harder at decoding, but they also different parts of the brain than good readers do

The causes

Visual / word-blindness- inability to read words despite normality of eyes due, perhaps to glitch in wiring of visual neurons during embryonic development (congenital word-blindness) or from some traumatic insult to brain (acquired word-blindness).

Inadequate instruction - children either had faulty teaching in alphabet skills and basic reading skills, or insufficient training in practicing reading

Social conditions - such as unskilled teachers, chaotic educational conditions, large classroom size, and poor parental support.

Inability to detect and discriminate sounds

Lesions in left occipital-temporal brain

Characteristics a student may display

Genetics -- Dyslexia is sometimes 50% hereditary.

Has difficulty playing and organizing time and tasks

Dislikes school, teachers, and lessons and participates little in academic routine

Research

Studies have shown strong associations between dyslexia and genetic mutations in twins and families, whilst other studies have possibly indicated some genes inherent in dyslexia.

Strategies to help a student become a more successful reader

Remember and focus on alternate strengths that the struggling reader has

Provide student with a counselor

Help student on his or her level.

Using teaching instruments, ascertain that problem is not dyslexic-reduced before dealing with it. It may be reducible to other factors; such as social or home, in which case these factors need to be dealt with.