Dyslexia and Reading Disorder

This disorder of phonologic processing and decoding of words is the most common developmental language disorder. It is estimated that as many as 30% of the American urban population has reading problems. Dyslexia frequently is familial, occurring more often in sons (35% to 40% risk of occurrence) than in daughters (17% to 18% risk). The underlying deficit is impaired recognition and processing of phonemes– the most discrete elements of sound in language. Those who have dyslexia do not appreciate that speech is composed of sounds that join together to form segments, syllables, morphemes, and words. The processing of language in the course of reading or writing is constantly compromised by the struggle to decode or encode words. Preschool children who have dyslexia manifest delays in acquisition of speech, poor articulation, difficulty with learning the names of letters and colors, and persistent missequencing of syllables (eg, “aminals” for “animals”). These children experience difficulty following multistep directions. They are unable to express frustration by “using their words” and, therefore, are prone to develop secondary behaviors such as hitting, kicking, or throwing tantrums.Dyslexia can be diagnosed confidently by the end of the second grade. Children will be slow and halting in their oral reading and have difficulty in reading comprehension. They have poor word retrieval and frequently use more fillers (”um,” “like,” “you know”) in their narratives. They experience markedly increased difficulties in the fourth grade when there is a shift from “learning to read” to “reading to learn.” Children must be taught to break down, or segment, syllables into phonemes. Some children whose overall cognitive abilities are high may compensate for their dyslexia and not be identified by the schools because they can maintain average grades. However, they will have persistent difficulties with spelling and written language into adulthood.

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