Recently, I got diagnosed with dyslexia after struggling with reading, writing and understanding the different sounds that different letters make. Especially, when these letters are combined in words. Therefore, in this clinical psychology podcast episode, you’re going to learn what is dyslexia, what causes dyslexia and how is dyslexia treated amongst other facts about the condition. If you’re interested in learning more about clinical psychology, learning difficulties and neurodevelopmental conditions then this is a great episode for you.
Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Developmental Psychology: A Guide To Developmental and Child Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca.
What Is Dyslexia?
Dyslexia is a neurodevelopmental condition that causes people to have difficulty with spelling, reading comprehension and word recognition. As well as whilst it is closely related to other learning disabilities like dyspraxia, dysgraphia and dyscalculia, this condition does affect people with normal and above-average intelligence too.
Additionally, dyslexia is believed to be the most common learning disability with the prevalence rate being around 5% to 17% of the population depending on the criteria being used. As well as it is possible for someone to have more than one learning disability, which is why a comprehensive evaluation is used during diagnosis. When learning disabilities are co-morbid, health professionals treat each condition separately because the different treatments that are effective for one condition might have no or little effect on another one. Like a dyslexia treatment might be useful for dyslexia but it might be useless for dysgraphia.
Personally, I knew I had dyslexia because I have always struggled with spelling and sounding out words. I just cannot do it and I found out recently I learn a word in “whole word blocks” so people normally learn by phonetics. For me phonetics are useless so I need to know what a whole word says then I remember the whole word instead of the sounds. This is why I struggle with learning new words and knowing how to say new words.
What Are The Symptoms Of Dyslexia?
Whilst this wasn’t the case for me, the symptoms and signs of dyslexia are typically seen in childhood but they do appear in adults too. For me, I did a dyslexia test when I was about 14 years old but I “failed” so I couldn’t receive a diagnosis but in the past few years my dyslexia has become more severe so I passed the screening test and the diagnosis.
Moreover, a dyslexic person’s reading ability is lower-than-average for their age but symptoms can still vary from one person to another. This is why we’ll look at some of the most common symptoms now, and remember not all these symptoms will appear within everyone with dyslexia.
Generally speaking, children as well as adults with dyslexia might struggle to summarise stories, remember phrases or words and understand jokes, idioms and other forms of wordplay. They might find it difficult to learn a second language too, but please remember that if no other symptoms are present, this is not an indicator of dyslexia.
Furthermore, with dyslexia being a neurodevelopmental condition, it is common for those with dyslexia to reach common developmental milestones like walking and talking, later than their peers. Then as they get old and grow up, children and adults with the condition might struggle to participate in activities that require coordination, like those with high levels of hand-eye coordination or activities that require concentration and focus.
I have a lot of these difficulties but mine can be explained slightly better by dyspraxia (a word I cannot actually spell without autocorrect on).
A final general symptom for this section is that because reading is a challenge for people with dyslexia that makes people feel like they’re a “failure” at reading, it can make children and adults anxious or upset about the idea of reading. Or they go to a lot of effort to avoid reading activities. Interestingly, this can unfortunately impact children’s self-esteem that can last into adulthood. Especially, if their dyslexia continues to go undiagnosed so they might even be called “lazy” or “slow” because they don’t want to read or they struggle with it.
This is why accurate timely diagnosis is so important because it can restore a child’s and an adult’s self-esteem as well as allow them to develop strategies that work best for their particular challenges. Also, with reading being considered a critical skill for academic success, this is why a lot of people with dyslexia believe they aren’t intelligent, when in reality, they are intelligent. They might just need a little more support and more strategies to help them learn and thrive.
What Are Some Specific Dyslexia Symptoms?
Firstly, a dyslexic person experiences delays or difficulties in learning to speak, read, the alphabet or how to spell. For me, I struggled so much with learning how to speak because I needed speech and language therapy for years just so I could form any words at all, as I was a mute child. As well as I struggled with reading words because I just couldn’t sound them out so I had to have extra lessons that focused on sounding out words.
It wasn’t useful but still.
Secondly, one aspect of a dyslexia assessment is you need to recall sequences of numbers, words and letters in a forwards and reverse order. That is very difficult for people with dyslexia and I hated that part of the assessment because I was seriously not good at it. I am pretty sure the psychologist doing my assessment actually stopped the reverse order sequences earlier because she could see how bad I was at the task. Therefore, difficulty recalling sequences of numbers, letters and/ or words is another symptom of dyslexia.
Thirdly, dyslexic people tend to misread one letter for another. This can include u for an n, a p for a q and so on. I don’t have any experience of this symptom.
Fourthly, this is how I actually knew I was dyslexic because my friends and housemates would lovingly bully me for my challenges with pronunciation. I have an amazing ability to randomly add and subtract letters of new words. I often get asked “Where’s the t, s, r in the word” because I randomly add so many extra letters. Or I get asked “There’s an r in the word, where’s that?”.
My pronunciation is rubbish.
In addition, people with dyslexia typically struggle with distinguishing the sounds of one word from another. Now I didn’t think I had any experience of this but my best friend who is half-French mentioned how I don’t have an ear for different sounds in French, but I remember something else too. I was talking with a housemate and we were talking about English as a language and they said a whole bunch of words and to me they sounded too similar for me to know the difference.
Finally, people with dyslexia can struggle with recognising what are known as “sight words”. For example, and, the or it.
What Causes Dyslexia?
Whilst researchers aren’t entirely sure what can cause a child to develop dyslexia, given how it can run in families, it is commonly believed there is a genetic component. I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if my Dad has dyslexia but that is just a pure guess. Also, neuroimaging studies have found that the brains of children with dyslexia develop and work differently to the brains of children at the same age as those without dyslexia. This could explain why people with dyslexia have phonological difficulties that make it harder for them to distinguish between the sounds of individual letters and letter patterns in similar words like bag, ban and bat.
In addition, dyslexia isn’t always a neurodevelopmental condition because it is possible to “acquire” dyslexia following a brain injury, stroke or another example of traumatic event. Then people with acquired dyslexia or alexia, lose their ability to read because the rear part of the left hemisphere of their brain is damaged, so this causes difficulties identifying individual numbers and letters.
How Is Dyslexia Treated?
Currently, there is no cure for dyslexia but in the majority of cases, it can be managed through compensatory techniques. In children with dyslexia, it’s important to recognise the symptoms and then start taking remedial steps as soon as possible within their journey through education so they can thrive and not risk falling behind. For this to happen, a formal evaluation is needed to uncover the specific deficit areas that the child has in reading and writing and this differs for every child. For example, I can read books and I have no problems enjoying reading, but I cannot read new words, I cannot sound out words and I have massive issues with not wanting to take notes in lectures because it takes me a while to write my notes out. As well as if I’m reading and I come across a new word, I don’t even try and read it, I just acknowledge there’s a weird word there and move on.
Furthermore, there are brain-based and environmental differences between children with dyslexia that can make it easier for some children to learn compared to others. Dyslexic children tend to be taught by educators that use methods that are modified to meet an individual’s needs. As well as family support can be massively important to improve a child’s self-image and prospects for success.
The same individual evaluations as well as reading interventions are necessary for adults with acquired dyslexia too.
In addition, as dyslexia is recognised as a disability, it is possible for a person with dyslexia to request workplace accommodations for their condition. This can include assistive technologies, like text-to-write software, having long documents summarised for faster interpretations and replacing written directions with oral ones.
Also, for some reason, people think there is a medication option for dyslexia, this isn’t true. There is no medication that is recommended for dyslexia, but if a child has another condition like ADHD alongside their dyslexia then Adderall and Ritalin can be useful for reducing ADHD symptoms but they will not help with the underlying dyslexia symptoms.
Finally, in terms of academic accommodations, these can be immensely useful for students with dyslexia and they are normally a collaboration between the school staff and parents. In the United States, dyslexia is considered a disability so it is protected under the Americans With Disabilities Act, so children with dyslexia are normally able to secure an Individualised Learning Plan that includes accommodations that help them to catch up in the classroom with their peers or perform better. These accommodations depend on the severity of the child’s condition and their specific symptoms, but they can include:
· Extra time on tests
· Options to dictate answers instead of writing them
· Use of audiobooks
Clinical Psychology Conclusion
After struggling with reading, pronunciation and being the joke for so long because I struggled with sounds so much, it is great to finally have an understanding and a diagnosis that can explain why I struggle so much with things that other people take for granted. Also, with a dyslexia diagnosis, I feel a little validated in a way because it means I am officially dyslexic, if that makes sense. It isn’t their excuse or condition that I am trying to use to explain away my difficulties, because now I actually have the condition instead of me thinking and hoping that I have it.
I would have preferred to have the diagnosis when I was back in school because that would have been really, really useful for me but I have it now. I can ask for accommodations when needed and whilst I don’t know how me having a dyslexia diagnosis will impact me in the future, I am glad that I have during my university.
Because you never know when a diagnosis that can get you more support than stigma might be useful especially as I enter the world of work after the final year of my degree.
I really hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode.
If you want to learn more, please check out:
Developmental Psychology: A Guide To Developmental and Child Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca.
Have a great day.
Clinical Psychology Reference and Further Reading
International Dyslexia Association website. Accessed September 6, 2017.
Lorusso, M. L., Borasio, F., Mistò, P., Salandi, A., Travellini, S., Lotito, M., & Molteni, M. (2024). Remote treatment of developmental dyslexia: how ADHD comorbidity, clinical history and treatment repetition may affect its efficacy. Frontiers in Public Health, 11, 1135465.
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. Dyslexia Information Page. Accessed September 6, 2017.
Peltier, T. K., Washburn, E. K., Heddy, B. C., & Binks-Cantrell, E. (2022). What do teachers know about dyslexia? It’s complicated!. Reading and Writing, 35(9), 2077-2107.
Shaywitz, S. E., Shaywitz, J. E., & Shaywitz, B. A. (2021). Dyslexia in the 21st century. Current opinion in psychiatry, 34(2), 80-86.
Snowling, M. J., Hulme, C., & Nation, K. (2020). Defining and understanding dyslexia: past, present and future. Oxford review of education, 46(4), 501-513.
Starrfelt R. Alexia: What happens when a brain injury makes you forget how to read. The Conversation. University of Copenhagen, Department of Psychology. July 14, 2015.
Toffalini, E., Giofrè, D., Pastore, M., Carretti, B., Fraccadori, F., & Szűcs, D. (2021). Dyslexia treatment studies: A systematic review and suggestions on testing treatment efficacy with small effects and small samples. Behavior research methods, 1-19.
Vaughn, S., Miciak, J., Clemens, N., & Fletcher, J. M. (2024). The critical role of instructional response in defining and identifying students with dyslexia: A case for updating existing definitions. Annals of Dyslexia, 74(3), 325-336.
Vouglanis, T., & Driga, A. M. (2023). The use of ICT for the early detection of dyslexia in education. TechHub Journal, 5, 54-67.
Wagner, R. K., Zirps, F. A., Edwards, A. A., Wood, S. G., Joyner, R. E., Becker, B. J., ... & Beal, B. (2020). The prevalence of dyslexia: A new approach to its estimation. Journal of learning disabilities, 53(5), 354-365.
Watter K, Copley A, Fitch E. Discourse level reading comprehension interventions following acquired brain injury: A systematic review. Disability and rehabilitation. Published online February 18, 2016.
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