What we would like you to do is to
find a topic from this week's chapter that you were interested in and search
the internet for material on that topic.
Please be sure to use at least 3
quality resources. If you use videos, please limit it to one video.
Once you have completed your search
and explorations we would like you to:
1a) State what your topic is.
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
2) Next, we would like you to take
the information you read or viewed related to your topic, integrate/synthesize
it, and then write about the topic in a knowledgeable manner. By
integrating/synthesizing we mean taking what your read/experienced from the
internet search organize the information into the main themes, issues, info,
examples, etc. about your topic and then write about the topic in your own
words using the information you have about the topic.
3) At the end of your post, please
include working URLs for the three websites. For each
URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it
contributed to your post.
1a) For this weeks topical blog I decided to do more research on the topic of Dyslexia.
1b) This topic relates to the chapter directly, on page 329 there is a short section on Dyslexia. ACcording to the book, dyslexia may have its origins in a genetic brain defect, but the degree of seriousness may depend on where you grew up. Also the book mentions a study that was done on 72 dyslexic people from different countries, and they found that participants who have English as their language have the highest degree of dyslexia.
1c) I was interested in doing more research on this subject because the book poses a very interesting study but they didn’t do a great job describing what the disorder is. They say there are theories positing that it may be a hearing disorder, a visual disorder, or a combination of the two but I’m not really sure what it actually is. I always thought it was messing up letters and numbers.
2) Dyslexia, or developmental reading disorder, is associated with having difficulty with learning to read fluently and with accurate comprehension despite having normal intelligence. People with disorder have difficulty with phonological awareness, phonological decoding, processing speed, orthographic coding, auditory short-term memory, language skills/verbal comprehension and rapid naming. It is the most common learning difficulty and it is the most recognized reading disorder. It is a lifelong challenge people are born with that is neurological and causes the brain to process and interpret information differently. There isn’t a single definition related to this disorder but all definitions encompass a number of reading skills, deficits and difficulties with a number of causes rather than a single condition.
There are many different characteristics associated with this disorder a few include: tests well orally but not written; talented in art, drama, music, sports, mechanics, storytelling, sales, business, designing, building, or engineering; labelled as a daydreamer; learns better hands on gets dizzy, headaches, or stomach aches while reading; difficulty telling time/managing time; difficulty counting objects; excellent long term memory for experiences, locations and faces; thinks with images and feelings rather than sounds or words; confused by letters, numbers, words, sequences, or verbal explanations; reads and rereads with little comprehension; difficulty putting thoughts into words; trouble with writing; difficulty with fine motor skills; confuses left and right, and many more. One common misconception people make is that dyslexia is when they read or write words backwards, or move letters around when reading, this happens but only to a very small proportion of dyslexics.
Researchers have used fMRI’s and PET to track the neuroanatomy behind this and have found that it may be due to less electrical activation in the left hemisphere, and also they have done post-autopsy on brains of people with dyslexia and found minor differences. This disorder has been studied with twin studies and it has been found that it is more so due to genes than environment.
Dyslexia can be managed and people with the disorder are able to learn to read and write and continue making improvements. When it is detected early in life it is easier to treat. Children can be provided with tutors, teachers, or other trained professionals. There are also suggestions which help it like: expose kid to early oral reading, writing, drawing and practice; have your child practice with different types of text; include multi-sensory structured language instruction; seek modifications in the classroom; use books on tape and assistive technology; get help with the emotional issues that arise from struggling to overcome academic difficulties.
3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyslexia
This website gave a very good overview on the topic of Dyslexia as a whole. It provided information on its classification, signs and symptoms, causes, management, epidemiology, history, research, and society and culture.
http://www.ncld.org/types-learning-disabilities/dyslexia/what-is-dyslexia
This was also a very good website that gave a brief overview about what dyslexia is, what are the effects of it, what are warning signs, how it is identified, and how it is treated.
http://www.dyslexia.com/library/symptoms.htm
Finally this website gave 37 different common characteristics of Dyslexia. Some examples include general, vision reading and spelling, math and time management, memory and cognition, behavioral, health, development and personality, hearing and speech, and writing/motor skills.
Topical Blog Chapter 11
Dyslexia is the topic I chose to learn more about for chapter eleven’s topical blog. Dyslexia is a developmental reading disorder. Dyslexia is interesting as it is due to a hearing disorder, a visual disorder, or a disorder that comprises of both modalities. I am also interesting in dyslexia as it may be caused by where you were raised. Different regions of the world have a higher chance of having dyslexic people. The United States is high in ranking of dyslexic people. I want to learn more about dyslexia to determine how people become dyslexic, where dyslexia is common at, and what is happening within the brain for people with dyslexia.
Within chapter 11 of our textbook on pages 329-330, dyslexia is discussed. Chapter 11 is about language such as words and their associated meanings. Dyslexia fits within the chapter as the chapter states that dyslexia deals with having difficulty differentiating between sounds of words. Further, the chapter explains that dyslexia is “the roots of a language disorder that may be in the brain.” From my research, I look more at this language disorder and its effects on the brain.
Dyslexia is a difficulty of learning to read fluently despite whether a person is normal or above average in intelligence. Others tend to see dyslexia as caused by a non-neurological deficiency with vision or hearing. Therefore, there are three subtypes of dyslexia including auditory, visual, and attentional. Someone with dyslexia may have an auditory processing disorder, an attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or a visual processing disorder.
Individuals with dyslexia show signs in early childhood beginning with delays in speech, letter reversal, mirror writing, or difficulties understanding left from right. As children age, they struggle with counting syllables, rhyming words, or blending sounds to make words. Into adulthood, individuals struggle with summarizing a story, memorizing, or learning a foreign language.
Research on dyslexia began in 1881 with Oswald Berkhan. Researchers used PET scans to find a correlation between functional and structural differences in the brains of children and their reading difficulties. It was found that children with dyslexia show less electrical activation in parts of the left hemisphere which is involved in reading. Children with dyslexia are highly intelligent, but are unable to read, write, or spell at their specific grade level. These children test well orally, but not written and are more hands-on in learning. It is also found that children with dyslexia have excellent long-term memory, but struggle with memory dealing with sequences, facts, and information that has not been experienced first-hand.
Overall, dyslexia is typically genetic and neurological. However, the primary language of an individual can cause a higher sense of dyslexia. Individuals with English as their primary language tend to struggle the most with dyslexia. This is due to the fact that the English language is very complex with many syllables. It is important to determine early, if a child has dyslexia, so trained professionals can help in their reading and writing skills.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyslexia
This website helped explain what dyslexia entails and what individuals with dyslexia experience. It also explained the neurological facts of the brain for a person with dyslexia.
http://www.dyslexia.com/library/symptoms.htm
This website shared common characteristics of dyslexia. It discussed personality characteristics, memory and cognition, hearing and speech, and writing and motor skills of individuals with dyslexia. It provided an overall basis of what dyslexia is and the struggles dyslexics face.
http://www.ncld.org/types-learning-disabilities/dyslexia/what-is-dyslexia
This website discussed the effects of dyslexia as well as the genetic information regarding dyslexia. It also explained the warning signs of dyslexia by age, how to help people with dyslexia, and how dyslexia is identified and treated.
I chose to do my topic this week on saccades and how they control our reading. I really enjoyed this topic in the text because it was something that I could really compare to my own life and actually think about when I am reading. I wanted to learn more about how much information we actually take in with our vision while reading.
Saccade control is defined as when our eye is able to move quickly from one point to another while pausing briefly or fixating at each resting point. Another way to look at it is that our brains are taking snapshots of what we’re reading and then it pieces them together and is able to bring the entire visual field into focus. We see an unbroken image but our brains are actually filling in the parts it didn’t get in an effort to make the images it shares make sense. Interestingly we learn how to effectively use saccades during the first years of our life. Babies struggle with being able to focus on any specific objects and it is only through learning how to use fixation that they are able to actually focus on a small object.
Saccadic eye movements involve the pattern of fixation-saccade-fixation. We fixate on a word for about 250 milliseconds as well developed readers. There are four different components to reading eye movements. They are: the saccades which are the eye movement, the duration of time spent on fixation, regressions which occur when our eyes go from right back to the left, and return sweeps which is when we reach the end of one line and have to return to the beginning of the next. Learning to read itself can be very complicated because it requires us to recognize so much information and when our saccades are off or we get tired we often aren’t able to read as effectively. We may have to constantly go back and re-evaluate information that was misread or skipped and when we’re tired it requires us to focus our attention even harder on the words or a lot can be missed.
The text talks about fluent readers and the ease with which they use saccades and fixations. It is almost automatic to them and they have more control over this process if need be. They are able to control how long they stay fixated on a word and will often go back or pause longer on a word they are not sure about. Reading requires that we use reflexive saccades which help scan the visual field and then we need an effective voluntary system that is able to control our fixations. In order to get these two skills to coincide it take a lot of practice.
Some people struggle to read or may even be dyslexic. This may be because their optomotor and visual processes are lacking and reading becomes more of a job than of an enjoyable experience. Dyslexia for instance may be caused by not being able to control your saccades efficiently. Studies have shown that by doing specific training in the auditory and visual processing areas, dyslexia can actually be improved and saccades are easier to control.
Terminology: saccades, fixation, dyslexia, optomotor system, voluntary system, regression, return sweeps,
Saccade Control in Reading
http://www.lookingforlearning.com/assess/sac.htm
This source helped to explain the process of saccades, deficits found when saccades and fixations aren’t effective, and ways to improve reading.
Reading Eye Movements
http://www.umsl.edu/~garziar/reading_eyemovements.htm
This source was helpful in sharing the steps to saccadic eye movements as well as giving a brief description of what it consists of.
Human Saccadic Eye Movements
http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Human_saccadic_eye_movements
This source helped explain the main functions of saccades and how they are formed by our brain and visual systems. It goes on to classify different types of saccades.
My topic is baby sign language. Baby sign language relates to the chapter because chapter 11 was about language and baby sign language is one way that small children can communicate before their verbal skills develop. I am interested in baby sign because my 17 month old niece knows some sign language and I wanted to learn more about how she learned it and about the benefits of baby sign.
Baby sign has many benefits. Initially, some researchers thought baby sign might slow language development in children, however; baby sign actually improves language development as well as emotional and cognitive development. In a study with 11 month old babies, those who learned baby sign language were more advanced talkers compared those who did not learn baby sign. The babies who learned baby sign exhibited verbal skills three months earlier than those who did not and these advancements were still present at three years of age. At age eight, the babies that learned sign scored an average of 12 points higher than those who did not learn sign on IQ tests as well. Parents also reported a closer parent-child bond and reduced baby distress with the babies that learned baby sign.
So with all these benefits, how do babies learn baby sign language? Babies can start to learn basic signs around six months of age or when the baby can hold the caregiver’s gaze for a couple of seconds. The caregiver starts with three to five signs, uses eye contact, and says the word aloud. It is recommended that the caregiver start out with words that are easily associated with the sign such as physical objects like a ball or shoe. The caregiver then repeats the signs on a regular basis and encourages other caregivers to sign as well. After about two months, the baby usually begins to copy the signs and then the caregiver can start teaching additional signs. Essentially, the baby understands that objects have a name, but sign language allows them to associate that name with a gesture before their verbal skills have fully developed.
Some researchers suggest that babies are able to learn and use sign language because our brains are hard-wired to process speech. One study showed that the left-hemisphere language area of the brain was active in newborns as young as two to five days old. Babies are also able to distinguish between their native language and other languages as early as the first few weeks after birth. However, Broca’s area, the language production area of the brain, is not as active in babies as in adults suggesting that babies understand language much earlier than they are able to produce it.
http://www.babysignlanguage.com/basics/research/ This resource discussed the research and benefits for baby sign language.
http://psychcentral.com/lib/teaching-your-baby-sign-language-can-benefit-both-of-you/0002423 This resource talked about how to teach baby sign as well as some of the benefits of baby sign language.
http://www.dana.org/Publications/Brainwork/Details.aspx?id=43746 This resource talked about the neuroscience of language in babies brains.
This week I wanted to talk about the different types of reasoning. I was really interested in the inductive and deductive reasoning skills that the chapter discussed. I liked these topics because I could apply them to how I use reasoning skills throughout my life. I especially liked the inductive reasoning because it was the type of reasoning that I most use. So, for this blog I would like to learn more about both deductive and inductive reasoning. I was wondering of there were any other good examples of the topic, or maybe who developed these type of reasoning skills. I will start my research with just an overview of both of the topics to see if I can gain any more information about the topic to help in my understanding of cognitive psychology.
The first article that I read provided some useful information that helped in my understanding of the topic. I had a general basis of the topic, but this article cleared some things up about the topic that made it easier to understand. Inductive reasoning uses inferences to come about conclusions. The book did a nice job of explaining this to with the example that was provided. When selecting a college it is easier to make the decision if we place other factors on the decision such as instructors, size, etc. With this it makes the decision easier to make because when we place factors on the decision we slowly sort out options that are now undersirable. I liked this type of reasoning because it seems most reasonable to me and the type of reasoning that I use to make a decision. I think that using past experiences and information to make a future decision is the most logical way.
The next article that I wanted to look at wanted to be about deductive reasoning. I found an article that did a good job of explaining the topic that made sense to me. In the previous chapter I talked about inductive reasoning, and I found out that deductive reasoning and inductive reasoning are not the same. Deductive reasoning is used to drop out other decisions and narrowing down until you have the right decision. An example that the article gave that proved to be useful was that Sherlock Holmes is a man, all men are mortals, therefore Sherlock Holmes is a mortal. I thought that this made sense until used my own example to try and use deductive reasoning. Deductive reasoning can be flawed in the sense that assumptions are made. The example that the book gave said that republicans are human, democrats are human, therefore democrats and republicans have the same views. Assumptions can be made, and that is why I do not agree with this type of reasoning as much as I do with inductive reasoning. I thought that this article did a good job in a couple of ways. It helped in my understanding of the topic and cognitive psychology. It also helped in the understanding of myself. I prefer to use inductive reasoning over deductive reasoning.
During my research of the topic I came across a very informative article about another type of reasoning that I can also agree with because it is used by experts in their field. I was previously looking at more information about inductive and deductive reasoning to see if I was getting all the information to make my best decision. In the article I was reading I came across the term abductive reasoning. This type of reasoning uses an educated guess to come to a conclusion. Most people that use this type of reasoning are doctors to make a diagnoses. The problem with this type of reasoning is that assumptions can also be made because there is not empirical information to come to the conclusion. This type of reasoning is mostly used to come to hypothesis. What I learned from reading this article was that there are different reasons for using the different types of reasoning. I came to this conclusion after reading this article because it is better to use different reasoning skills for certain situations. I think that this was a very useful because it helped in my understanding of cognitive psychology and then my understanding of the other topics that I researched.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_reasoning
This site helped in the understanding of inductive reasoning and the general knowledge associated with the topic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deductive_reasoning
This article was helpful in helping me understand the topic along with my preference of type of reasoning.
http://www.livescience.com/21569-deduction-vs-induction.html
This article was helpful in my understanding of abductive reasoning which turned into my understanding of the other topics that I researched as well.
1a) State what your topic is.
This week I decided to do some research into the field of neurolinguistics.
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
This chapter was all about language, and they occasionally included areas about how neuroscience relates to it. Neurolinguistics is the study of how neural mechanisms work to control the comprehension, production, and acquisition of language.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
I am interested in this because I love reading the sections in the book that talk about how the brain influences the various aspects of cognition, and I actually enjoyed reading about language as a topic this week, so I decided to see the basics of the field of study focusing on how the brain works in relation to language.
2) Neurolinguistics is a very broad field. It draws from a diverse group of fields, including cognitive science, neurobiology, linguistics, neuroscience, neuropsychology, and computer science. It is closely related to psycholinguistics, which has its roots in theoretical linguistics. Neurolinguistics addresses questions of the subfields of phonetics, phonology, morphology, lexicology, syntax and semantics. Neurolinguistics attempts to find how the brain extracts speech sounds from an acoustic signal, how a particular languages phonological system is represented in the brain, how the brain stores and accesses words, and how the brain works to combine words into meaningful constituents and sentences. The study of neurolinguistics depends on both hemodynamic and electrophysiological measures. Hemodynamic measures work to measure what parts of the brain receive extra oxygen from increased blood supply. These measures (PET, fMRI) allow for great spatial resolution, making them valuable to the process of seeing what parts of the brain are involved more in various language tasks. However, these techniques are slow, and cannot appropriately show how the brain works in response to immediate tasks like language. For this temporal resolution, we rely on the electrophysiological measures. These measures (EEG, MEG) generally focus on event related potentials (ERPs), which are distinct brain responses that indicate neural activity. In a study attempting to measure the neural basis of sentence processing, they focused on three distinct ERPs: the N400, the ELAN, and the P600. The N400 is a negative wave that peaks about 400 milliseconds after the stimulus, and occurs in response to a word that cannot be semantically integrated. The other two ERPs are related to syntactic processes. The ELAN (Early Left Anterior Negativity), which occurs between 100-500ms correlates with word category errors, whereas the P600 (a late centro-parietal positivity which occurs between 600-1000ms) correlates to syntactic violations, and the processing of syntactically complex sentences. The study was proposing a three phase model, focusing on semantic information, syntax, and prosody. Semantic and syntactic processes both involve parts of the temporal and inferior frontal cortex (the left medial temporal gyrus + Brodman’s area 45/47, and the anterior left superior temporal gyrus + Brodman’s area 44, respectively). Prosodic processes were found to involve the right posterior superior temporal gyrus, which is interesting as it is the only neural correlate in the right hemisphere to play a significant role in language. Prosody doesn’t deal with the common aspects of language, such as word selection or sentence structure, but rather involves other elements of language, such as irony, sarcasm, inflection, emphasis and rhythm. I don’t understand how the brain comprehends or constructs language, but that’s to be expected as there is an entire field of study dedicated to this. I am glad I looked into this topic now, because I know some of the basics about neurolinguistics and I learned about the brain structures involved in different parts of language, and that’s pretty cool.
3)
http://www.psych.nyu.edu/pylkkanen/Neural_Bases/01_Intro.pdf
I used this link to give me an overview of linguistics, psycholinguistics, and neurolinguistics. It showed how each discipline built off of the one preceding it and talked about some of the main discoveries and points of inquiry for each.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurolinguistics
This link gave me the basic information having to do with the history of neurolinguistics, as well as its primary research questions, means of measurement, and structure of experimental designs.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364661300018398
This link is a study about the neural basis of auditory sentence processing. The study examined the brain structures and event related potentials associated with semantic, syntactic, and prosodic information.
Chapter 11 Topical Blog
The topic from chapter 11 that I chose to learn more about was the eye-tracking studies. Eye-tracking studies are done with a camera placed in front of the person being studied. The person is asked to read something or view a certain image, and the camera in front of them will record their eye movements. The reason that this is so interesting to me is because I have read about it before and when it is used in certain studies. The study that I had read about before was done with young children. The children were shown pictures of people of different races and recorded which race the child was first drawn to. The results were very interesting. I think it’d be cool to learn about more studies like this. Eye-tracking could be used for a number of things on a number of different people. It was found that when reading, the eyes do not move across the page in a smooth motion. They move in a series of small jumps called saccades. Between saccades, there are short moments of fixation on certain parts of the text. I want to know how this information is useful today and why.
This topic is related to the chapter because this chapter is all about language. If you have an eye-tracking device, you can see how a person’s eye movements relate to them reading. Reading is one of the main ways we understand our language. We can use eye-tracking studies to see how well people can read our language and other languages. One main way we can show how we perceive our language (especially how well we perceive it) – is through reading. We see this through our childhood education when we must take different reading exams at different levels. The teachers can decipher what sort of reading level we are at by how well or poorly we do on these tasks. This same thing can be done without the presence of others if we use eye-tracking techniques.
I found that eye-tracking is done on infants to find out whether or not they understand spoken language. These studies were done on infants who where too young to speak yet. The researcher would say a word to the infant and then would show them two pictures. One of the pictures would represent the word that was just spoken, and the other would not. For example, if the researcher said the word “dog”, they would then show a picture of a dog and a cat. If the infant understood the word – they would look at the picture of the dog. If the infant did not understand the word, they wouldn’t know which picture to look at. This is important to show that infants to understand language at a very young age, even though they can’t yet speak it.
Another thing that I found in doing this blog was that eye-tracking studies are used by people who create websites. They do this to see what the person finds visually attractive and what their eyes are drawn to the most. There was a study done that showed people are predictable in the way that they scan the internet. A man named Jacob Nielsen found that people (roughly) view webpages in an “F” pattern. Eye-tracking studies showed that the person would scan the page from left to right first. After that, they would scan the page from top to bottom. And then continue with this pattern (left to right, then top to bottom). Knowing this bit of information can be really important to a business that is looking to start up a website. If the website designer knows that a person will scan the page in an “F” shape pattern in a matter of seconds, they can put the most detrimental information in that line of view. A few other pointers that these types of eye-tracking studies found were that anything visually stimulating will capture attention the fastest. These things could be pictures, videos, etc. Another one is that people almost never pay attention to ads – or things that look like ads. I think all of these points are very interesting, and people creating websites should now this. We’ve all gone to certain web pages and instantly closed out of them because of how they looked. If everyone had this information, that wouldn’t be a factor.
Eye-tracking can also be very useful in the world of advertising. If people know what we are most attracted to visually, they will know how to better advertise. The article that I found on this concept puts a strange twist on it. In class a few weeks ago, we were talking about the new glasses that Google is making. By wearing these glasses, Google will be able to track our eye movements whenever they want. They will be able to see what our eyes are most drawn to and what they are not. This is kind of a creepy concept. The fact that by wearing these glasses, someone can be looking into your eyes as you are looking at articles online. It also says that Samsung just came out with the Galaxy S4. I knew that there was a Galaxy S4 – but I didn’t realize that it had the ability to track a person’s eye movements. The features it has are called “smart scroll” and “smart pause”. This means that a person is able to scroll down their phone or pause a video all by moving their eyes a certain way.
As if those things aren’t creepy enough, there is also a new system for tracking people’s eyes at stores. As soon as a customer walks up to an item, their eye movements will be recorded to see what they are most interested in. This will help the store owners know how to effectively place items. If they can get the customer’s eyes drawn to certain things, they will be set. Once they know what is appealing to the general public, things might start to change. Shelves will be arranged differently, isles will be arranged differently, and maybe even the looks of certain products will change to be more attractive.
URLs:
http://www.tobii.com/en/eye-tracking-research/global/research/linguistics/
The first thing I wanted to find were real life studies using eye-tracking technology. This website talks about how eye-tracking was used on infants to know if they understand language before they are able to actually speak it.
http://blog.crazyegg.com/2012/11/08/lessons-eye-tracking-studies/
This website had a lot of good pointers to help out someone that is creating a website. There were eye-tracking studies done that showed what people’s eyes are initially, and for the most part, drawn to.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-tso/eye-tracking-technologies_b_3457397.html
In this article there was a lot of information on the future of eye-tracking techniques. There are many new things coming. These things are very high-tech, and they could change the way we perceive many items.
Terms: Eye-Tracking Studies, Language, Saccades
1) The topic that I chose to do for my blog is saccades. This topic relates back to the chapter as there is a section in the book that talks about the topic. I decided to do this topic because I wanted to do something that related back to my life and well reading is a large part of our life. Understanding what happens when we read is just one more benefit in our favor. I found that saccade was a topic that I didn’t know much about, I new our eyes moved but I didn’t realize that they move for each word that we read and how fast our eyes are able to move a crossed a paper.
2) Saccade is defined as when our eye is able to move quickly form one point to another while briefly pausing at a resting point. Looking is achieved by orienting the eyes, that is to say directing their visual axes to point to a new location. The brain commands sent to the eye muscles result in the eyes making a rapid step-like motion which move them to their new position. As we see things in our daily life we are actually seeing snap shots of everything and our brain is putting everything together and filling in the missing pieces. Saccadic eye movement involve the pattern of fixation-saccade-fixation. As we are reading we actually fixate on a word for about 250 milliseconds as we become well developed readers. As we learned to read we may have noticed that it was a complicated process as there is so much information that is requires us to recognize and when our saccades become tired we are not able to read as effectively. When reading text presented on top of the figure the eyes start in the middle of the first word and jumps to the next word. As we are reading larger words our eyes may need a two or three landings of the eyes before we are able to comprehend what we have seen. Depending on the landing point and the success of identifying the word consideration the next step may be different as you might have to have another landing of the eyes or move on to the next words. The video that I watched gave me a visual perception of the eyes as they moved across the screen. Sometimes those who suffer from saccades will have one eye that does not move at the same time as the other one of the eyes have moved slower. While reading about this topic it has broadened my knowledge about saccades and how much it impacts it in our life. If our eyes are not able to move at the same time and at the same speed we are not going to be able to read or comprehend information at a time.
http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Human_saccadic_eye_movements this website gave me information about the biological process of saccadic eye movements
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6uTlnyNaTs This video gave me a visual perception on how saccades works and what it impacts on our vision.
http://www.lookingforlearning.com/assess/sac.htm this website gave me more information about what the eyes did and how it can affect our reading process.
1. For this weeks topical blog I chose to research the auditory aspect of dyslexia. This weeks chapter was focused on language. Dyslexia is a disorder that relates to the understanding of language in written and auditory forms. We read about the different theories that exist to explain how we encode and recall language information. Those with dyslexia have problems with these processes and there a number of proposed causes for this. Before reading this chapter I had an image of dyslexia that involved only trouble with reading and writing of letters and words. I had no idea that there can be a hearing component that plays a role in the difficulties that those with dyslexia face. This has become a common disorder that can add hurdles to gaining and education as well as functioning day to day. I was interested in learning about this hearing component and how a persons auditory system effects the vision system.
2. The International Dyslexia Association defines dyslexia as a "language-based disability in which a person has trouble understanding words, sentences or paragraphs; both oral and written language are affected". It is becoming and excepted fact that hearing plays a role in the onset of dyslexia. Dyslexia is not an impairment that effects the entire auditory or visual systems or processes. Those with dyslexia see the impairment of these systems in the processing areas for the systems. The main trouble with reading that those with dyslexia have is with separating sounds of words into their separate phonemes to match with the letters that represent them. A person distinguishes different letter sounds from one another generally by recognizing and identifying the changes in speech amplitude and frequency. A normal functioning auditory system is adapted to pick up these amplitude and frequency modulations. When tested it is seen that the auditory system of those with dyslexia were less sensitive to these changes and thus make it difficult for the person to detect them. Both the visual and the auditory systems have magnocells within them. It is theorized that the magnocells in those with dyslexia did not fully develop and this is what causes the decreased sensitivity to speech frequency and amplitude changes.
There have been many studies done to compare the brain activity of those with dyslexia and those without it. These studies have showed that areas of the left hemisphere that are known to be associated with speech were high active in those without dyslexia while performing reading activities while those with dyslexia showed very little to no activities in these areas during the same tasks. It was also seen that those with dyslexia over time began to show activity in the corresponding right hemisphere of the brain. There have been different classifications of dyslexia that have developed to better specify the difficulties of the disorder. Someone with the classification of phonologic dyslexic is more likely to have problems with nonwords or unfamiliar words. Someone with comprehension dyslexic is more likely to have problems with irregular words that don’t fit into customary categories.
There have been a number of different techniques developed, especially for the school setting, that are intended to assist in the reading and comprehension aspect of dyslexia. It has also become more common in practice to use techniques that work on the auditory aspect of dyslexia as well. One of these methods includes training children's ears to better hear the amplitude and frequency changes through teaching them music, rhythm, and rhyme. Computer programs have also been developed that emphasize sound changes when reading aloud in order to train their ears to when the changes typically occur.
http://www.webmd.com/parenting/news/20031027/dyslexia-affects-hearing-process
This website explained what difference occur in brain activity between those that have dyslexia and those that do not when performing reading and auditory tasks.
http://www.dyslexic.org.uk/research-hearing.html
This website gives an explanation of what causes the hearing deficit that has been shown to cause or be apart of the problems that those with dyslexia face. The website also explains some methods that are used to help those with dyslexia learn to improve their hearing in order to aid in their reading.
http://www.ldonline.org/article/16285/
This website explained that there are different types of dyslexia and what they involve. It gave examples of treatments for different types of dyslexia as well. The website explained different ways that the brains of those with dyslexia can be damaged that produce these different types of the disorder.
For this weeks topical blog I chose to research and write about saccades. Since I was very young I’ve loved reading so I was rather interested in learning more about the actual brain functions that are occurring as you read. It was really interesting to learn what our eyes actually do during the process of reading.
A saccade is considered to be the movement our eye makes between brief moments of fixation as we’re piecing together what is before us, whether that is the picture of our surroundings or the various letters from words and text we’re attempting to study. Cognitive psychologists have studied reading processes since the mid-20th century and we’ve learned much about the differences between an experienced reader and a struggling reader. Much of the differences lie in the number of saccades and fixations made while reading text. Slower readers often make more saccadial eye movements, more frequent fixations, and fixations of longer durations. They also often struggle with moving from right to left to the new line of text efficiently.
An average saccade is 100-300 ms, while the average fixation is 200-250 ms. When attempting to piece together your visual field the average adult makes 3-5 saccades. However, our brain is very efficient at doing this quickly and causing the fixations to overlap so that all we realize we’re seeing is the single visual field before us, not the 3-5 snap shots of saccades and fixations it took to gather all of the information.
Other than the saccades and fixations in processing both visual fields and reading material, there are two additional components used in reading processing. These are the regressions and return sweeps. Regressions are also usually made automatically while reading through text. If while reading you didn’t quite catch the words or meaning your eyes will make what is essentially a reverse saccade and again briefly fixate on previously read text, but this reverse saccade is referred to as a regression. The return sweeps are the movement from the ending of one line of text back over to the beginning of another line.
Readers who are more experienced or fluent will automatically adjust saccades and fixations while reading. If there is a longer or more difficult word their brains will automatically fixate on the words however much is necessary to register and understand it without the reader having to pause and stumble over this more difficult text. Less experienced readers may get more easily hung up on a challenging word because their brains don’t automatically make that extra saccade and fixation or two in order to register it, but instead stumble and stop on the word.
Knowing this information it’s easier to understand how simply reading more and having experience in it can help you be more efficient. If your eyes and brain are trained and experienced in making saccades, fixations, regressions, and return sweeps they’ll be more natural and less of a struggle as you’re reading.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_movements_in_reading
I used this link to help provide information for my post. It helped me get a basic understanding of what a saccade is and how it’s used in reading, as well as the development of the study of it over time.
http://www.lookingforlearning.com/assess/sac.htm
This link was helpful to me because it helped me understand the function of saccades beyond the scope of just using them in reading but using them in processing a visual field as well.
http://www.umsl.edu/~garziar/reading_eyemovements.htm
This link was particularly helpful in introducing me to components of saccades outside of just the fixations also involved. It helped me to also talk about regressions and return sweeps.
1a) State what your topic is.
I have chosen to do research on Dyslexia.
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
Dyslexia relates to this chapter because it is all about how we visualize things.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
I am interested in this because it is talked about so much but I still hardly know anything about it except that letters get jumbled.
2) Next, we would like you to take the information you read or viewed related to your topic, integrate/synthesize it, and then write about the topic in a knowledgeable manner.
Reading may seem easy to most of us, but to certain people it is an extreme struggle. About 15% to 20% of the U.S. population has a reading disability called Dyslexia. Dyslexia is associated with a painful struggle with reading. Most kids begin learning to read by learning how speech sounds make up words and then connecting those sounds to alphabet letters. However, kids with Dyslexia have trouble with phonemic awareness and phonics. Research has shown that Dyslexia occurs because of problems in information processing, especially in language regions of the brain. For these children, reading does not become automatic.
Recently, Dyslexia research has taken a surprising turn. Research has shown that people with dyslexia have skills that are superior to typical readers. There is evidence that has shown that people with Dyslexia have sharper peripheral vision than others. Research also shows that Dyslexics process information from the visual periphery more quickly. Whatever special abilities Dyslexics may have, their difficulty with reading is still a handicap.
Most Dyslexics have quite a few problems in multiple areas of their lives. Dyslexics are unable to read, write, or spell at their grade level. They are labelled as lazy, dumb, careless, and immature. They also have dizzy spells, hear things that are not said, easily distracted by sounds, difficulty putting thoughts into words, and they also feel dumb and have poor self-esteem. One of the worst parts about having Dyslexia is that others may tell them that they have a “gift” which is unhelpful and patronizing.
3) At the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.
http://www.dyslexia.com/library/symptoms.htm
This source was helpful because it gave me information on what Dyslexics feel and what may happen to them throughout the day.
http://kidshealth.org/parent/medical/learning/dyslexia.html
I liked this source because it told me more about Dyslexia and what it is.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/opinion/sunday/the-upside-of-dyslexia.html?_r=0
This source helped me by letting me know that Dyslexics do have positives in their lives when it comes to school but that they don’t like others to think that because they those positives that it makes school easy for them.
1) As I was looking up information on nature vs nurture, Genie's story came up quite often. The extent of the abuse was just terrible, but it did provide some level of understanding of what it does to a human when kept in almost complete isolation. Genie has been mentioned before in previous chapters, In class and in other classes.
2) One of the main concepts of the nature vs. nurture debate is what has the biggest influence over our abilities? The ones we are born with or the ones we learn? While there are valid arguments on both sides and generally speaking, there probably is a mix of both, this question is hard to truly test in a research lab. It is simply unethical to deprive a human being of interaction in the hopes of gaining scientific proof for a hypothesis. However, on November 4th, 1970, researchers in the field of linguistics, after the discovery of one of the most horrific cases of child abuse in history, were able to test out their theories. Genie (a pseudonym) was a 13 year old girl that was discovered to have been literally locked up, in isolation, since before she was two. Strapped to a potty chair or in her crib, she was severely restricted on food and never interacted with anyone besides small periods where she was fed small amounts of food or beaten by her father. When first discovered, she was thought to be only 6 or 7, because of her small stature. Also, she had a hard time walking, was incontinent, made very little noise, clawed and scratched at her face, and generally was unable to speak.
After she was removed from her parents care, she was put into a hospital in California, which was able to care for and work on rehabilitation of this sweet little girl. Experts began running tests and examining her, particularly when it came to whether or not she was able to speak. They discovered that not only did she not show any real ability to speak, she had little control over the muscles of her mouth-as she had a very hard time chewing and swallowing food. However, they felt that if they were able to test her comprehension of speech, they would be able to tell if she didn’t have the knowledge or lacked the understanding to use her knowledge. If she was going to be faced with first-language acquisition, this would be troubling, as it is typically something that occurs before the age of 5.
Researchers continued to find ways to test Genie and her development. One of the reasons given for why authorities believe that Genie was abused to the extent that she was is because of suspected intellectual disability. After suffering from Rh incompatibility after birth, she was believed to have what is called kernicterus, which can lead to severe neurological damage. There was concern over whether the abuse in of itself caused Genie to have an intellectual disability. Initial testing of Genie ruled out autism and there was no obvious brain deficit. However, after conducting sleep studies, it appeared that Genie may have had been born with a disability, as she had elevated sleep spindles, something seen typically in someone that is intellectually disabled. This is something that researchers remained divided over.
While Genie did continue to make progress in some aspects of her speech and was able to answer questions about the past and about the future, she never progressed to have a normal language system. After funding was taken from the research of Genie, she went from living in an environment in which she was progressing, into years in which she suffered at the hands of foster families. After reuniting with her mother (whom had been acquitted of all child abuse charges; Genie’s father committed suicide) and living with her for a short time, her mother could not handle the emotional and behavioral problems that Genie had. When she was moved into a foster home, she was abused in some of the same ways that she had been at the hands of her father. She regressed in her language abilities, keeping silent for months at a time. Genie is currently thought to be a ward of the state of California, living in an adult foster home. She has reportedly retained much of the sign language she was taught while she was in the children’s hospital, but speaks very little.
3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genie_%28feral_child%29 This page had many good and detailed information and was made easy to read. I found a lot of the information on her early discovery and her time at the Children’s Hospital.
http://www.neiu.edu/~circill/bofman/ling450/linguistic.pdf This is actually a paper written by some of the research team that worked and tested Genie while at the Children’s Hospital. It gave a lot of information in regards to testing procedures and results at the specific time.
http://psychology.about.com/od/historyofpsychology/a/genie.htm This site talks about Genie in general, but also about the critical period for learning language. I though this site did a great job of making this concept simple to understand.
This week I looked further into reading comprehension and cognition. The book talks about a study where Cattell discovered that people while reading actually read only a few words at a time and then fixate on a point as a pause for comprehension. He also found that the more familiar you are with the topic of the readings, the less frequently you have to stop, and the less time you spend at each fixation point. While reading I found that this concept is heavily tied to not only how much you know, but if you know anything at all. For example if you can’t understand the words you’re reading, then it is likely that much of the context will be lost on you as well. Conversely, if you know a lot about the words, and they bring many other concepts to mind immediately, then the context will be much easier to understand and you won’t need as much time to comprehend the sentence.
There are two different stages of reading; passive and active. Passive reading is when you are simply processing the letters and physically reading the words. However, active reading is when you start to understand the context of the sentence. Active reading is when your comprehension begins, you are no longer decoding, or just searching the letters and words for root meaning, but you are understanding the story or sentences. Unfortunately I couldn’t find much more information on the comprehensions side of things. I found many tips and tricks to improve your comprehension over time, as well as many exercises that are meant to improve children’s comprehension. It seems that the most effective method of improving your comprehension of a topic, is to learn more about that topic. I also read that if you learn more about comprehension, and comprehension styles, then just being aware of how your brain functions could improve your comprehension.
http://everydaylife.globalpost.com/cognitive-factors-affect-reading-comprehension-15815.html
This website gave me very little general information about coding.
http://www.sedl.org/reading/framework/overview.html
This website gave me many tips for improving comprehension.
http://www.learningrx.com/reading-comprehension-skills.htm
This website gave me all of the information about active and passive reading.
The topic I chose to research this week was dyslexia. I had considered doing other topics from the chapter but dyslexia seemed to be the culmination of many concepts in the chapter and I had always wanted to know more about the disorder. Dyslexia is mentioned near the end of chapter 11, so it fits in with the chapter quite nicely.
Dyslexia is a developmental reading disorder in which a person has trouble learning to read fluently and developing proper reading comprehension. This isn't due to a deficit in intelligence however, as many people with the disorder are of average or even above-average intelligence. Dyslexia is the most common learning disorder and despite this, there is no widely used, single definition of the disorder.
The disorder affects roughly 5-17% of the population, although this figure is widely debated. It is typically characterized by mistakes in reading and spelling, such as omissions, substitutions of words, and additions to the sentence. Surprisingly, the disorder is also often accompanied by dysfunction in fine motor coordination, such as writing, and auditory segmenting difficulty. This is due to the fact that dyslexia isn't limited to reading but also to hearing. The disorder can be auditory as well as visual and in auditory dyslexia, a person can't link the auditory equivalent of a word to its visual component.
There are many different types of dyslexia as well. The general distinction is whether the disorder is the result of developmental issues or if it is acquired, typically after experiencing brain trauma. Following this, the disorder is typically divided into four distinct subgroups. The first is surface, which is when a person can read words phonetically but has problems with whole word recognition. The second is phonological, in which a person can read familiar words by using whole word method but has difficulty "sounding out" words that are new or letter-to-sound decoding problems. The third is spelling, which involves difficulty reading individual letters, that leads to reading words if given enough time but having problems recognizing the word as a whole and phonetically. The last subgroup is direct, in which a person can read aloud without comprehension that is similar to speech comprehension aphasias like anomia.
Dyslexia is typically caused due to genetics but environment has been shown to have an influence as well. As stated earlier, the disorder can be acquired later in life, typically through brain trauma of some sort. Dyslexia can aslo be treated with enough effort. Symptoms can be managed in order to relieve stress and improve learning. It is nice to know that despite the hardship and stress a disorder such as this one can cause, there are solutions out there and plenty of support for those who suffer from it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyslexia
This worked as a good overview of the topic like usual.
http://www.macalester.edu/academics/psychology/whathap/ubnrp/dyslexia/types.html
This provided me with an overview of the different types and subgroup of dyslexia.
http://www.slideshare.net/SeanWF/dyslexia-and-cognitive-psychology
Another good overview of the subject that also displayed the disagreement on the prevalence of dyslexia throughout the population. This site also had a nice video of what it is like to experience dyslexia.
1) The topic I have chosen is Dyslexia. I chose this topic because I do not know much about it, and in the chapter there was a section on reading, and how when we read our eyes do not sweep across a line words, but it moves in a series of small jumps, which I thought was interesting so I wanted to look up Dyslexia and see how people with that are affected when it comes to reading.
2) Dyslexia is the most common learning difficulty. There are three subtypes of dyslexia, and they are: auditory, visual, and attentional. Dyslexia occurs because of problems in information processing. The most common place for this is in the language portion of the brain. This difficulty can also affect a person’s language skills. Some people are not born with it, it can also occur after a person has gotten brain damage. People who have this difficulty may write letters in reversal or mirrored effects, speech delays when young, difficulty with directions and left and right, as well as being distracted by background noises. Letters being reversed is not always a true sign of Dyslexia when children are young, because kids tend to put mirrored letters and getting them reversed when they are learning until they are about in the 1st or 2nd grade. The main problem with children who have Dyslexia is problems with Phonics’. Around 15-20% of all people in the U.S. have dyslexia. This disorder occurs in about 5% of children and 25-40% of children who have ADHD or Dyslexia meet criteria for other sorts of disorders.
Elementary children who have Dyslexia have problems rhyming, learning to talk, pronouncing long words, learning the alphabet in order, reading and writing their own name, and ect. This difficulty tends to run in families of people who have either Dyslexia other reading disorders. Comprehensive evaluations are given to children to have a for sure diagnosis.
Many people look at this difficulty as negative, but researchers are finding out that people who have this may have different sharper abilities, such as peripheral vision. There is also evidence that has been found that shows that people with this can process visual information from the peripheral vision more quickly than others can. In some cases those with Dyslexia are the superior learners even with this barrier to overcome.
I notice especially where I work and in society that people see disabilities as a disadvantage, which may be true, but what is important to look at is the abilities that that person does have. People who have disabilities can do extraordinary things and they see the world from a different perspective than we do. So even though there is a down there will be an up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyslexia
I chose this website, because it gave background information on Dyslexia as well as some statistics for children.
http://kidshealth.org/parent/medical/learning/dyslexia.html
I chose this website, because it also gave statistics and told the reasons that it can occur. Reversal is always not a for sure sign of Dyslexia.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/opinion/sunday/the-upside-of-dyslexia.html?_r=0
Studies are showing that this difficulty is not always a bad thing and there are ups.
1.A. My topic is, Dyslexia: Long fixations or seeing what isn’t there.
B. This topic is related to the chapter in that dyslexia and the ways dyslexic people read were points of discussion in the chapter. In this topic, eye movement and recognition of words are covered and in addition these were subjects of chapter 11.
C. I am interested in dyslexia because there does seem to be neurological evidence of how dyslexic people’s brains function, but yet still researchers have yet to learn some characteristics of dyslexia and reach consensus on other matters. For example there is some disagreement over the hearing versus visual components of dyslexia and if one or both are components of dyslexia. This topic will focus on the visual component.
A popular opinion of the lay people is that dyslexia entails that an individual see words and/or letters backwards. My first source would both support and complicate the truth of this opinion. In the article the author’s cite other findings suggesting a 30% rate of regressive eye movements for English children. This suggests that the kids may be misreading a word, moving their gaze to another word, realizing their perception of the last word is nonsensical then looking back to re-read the word in order to learn what it really is. However, the study also finds that there are differences in amount of fixation time on words between kids from different countries.
That is some students spent/needed longer lengths of time in order to recognize a word. Given that finding it may be the case that longer processing times are an important part of why dyslexic people need great lengths of time to read. Findings from the second source suggest that dyslexic individuals have more points of fixation while reading and fixate for relatively longer amounts of time. This reinforces the notion that length of time spent at each point of fixation could cause a significant amount of difficulty for dyslexic people in reading in academic contexts.
If this is the case though, why has the idea that dyslexic people see words in jumbled manner or see words that aren’t actually on the page so prevalent? My third source may contain an answer as the authors suggest that the erratic/unusual eye movements (which may cause reading errors) are result of dyslexic people trying to cope with having a shorter visual span than those who are not dyslexic. It may really be that a need for higher quantities of fixations is what causes the beleaguered reading speeds in dyslexic people and the pressure to read faster causes attempts to read faster which results in more reading errors.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0093934X03004012 This source allowed me to introduce both of my main points of interest, that A) dyslexic people make reading errors and B) that dyslexic people take more time while reading.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002839329900038X The second study provides more evidence reinforcing the other finding that dyslexic people take longer to recognize a word. The finding that there are more points of fixation for dyslexic people was relevant to the final paragraph.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004269890700260X This source suggests that more points of fixation occur with dyslexic people because they have a smaller visual span. This could explain why they take more time to read. Their suggestion that erratic eye movements are caused by attempts to read faster or improve the visual span could explain why the more well-known odd reading errors are made by dyslexic individuals.
1a. My topic this week will be the theory of Universal Grammar.
1b. My topic relates to the chapter because the chapter thoroughly discusses our cognitive ability to produce language.
1c. I am interested in this topic because I am currently exploring the ideas of Noam Chomsky in my Memory and Language class and I wanted to explore further this theory of a Universal Grammar.
Universal Grammar is an idea that was ushered in by renowned researcher Noam Chomsky but dates back to the ideas of Roger Bacon in the 13th century. Roger Bacon noted that all languages seemed to share a common set of rules or grammar. Chomsky more refined view of Universal Grammar proposes that language is something biologically hardwired into the brain from birth. A common precept is that language is learned through modeling and we slowly acquire the rules for language as time goes on, but Chomsky argues otherwise. The theory argues that all languages share common properties such as verbs and nouns, and also common rules or grammar no matter how remote the language, such as a language from a tribe in Africa. The only differences in grammatical rules are slight and accidental. When Chomsky speaks of the innate ability of language he is not talking about vocabulary. We learn different words as we go through life, but our grammar is something that we our born to know how to do. We know how to use tag questions, don’t we? Don’t we in the last sentence is a tag question, we use them all the time but can you explain the rule behind tag questions? We often use grammatical rules and take them for granted as how the rules actually function, but we use them anyway. Even from early on children are using grammatical rules that are never taught to them. We are always forming new sentences and using different rules that just make sense to our culture without ever having “learned” them for anyone. Chomsky argues that this is just a biological adaptation that has evolved over time in humans, it is a function. Many people believe that the differences in languages all over the world are very different, but according to the universal grammar theory the differences in languages are only on the surface. What different people call a tree in any language is irrelevant, but how we ask questions, describe events, tell a story, and are very similar regardless if it is French, Russian, or Japanese.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfiHd6DyuTU
This video was helpful in that it discusses the innate ability of children to use grammatical rules without the apparent “learning” of the rules. It is a very helpful demonstration of what Universal Grammar means, which can be a pretty tough concept to grasp, no matter how simple Chomsky says the idea is.
http://grammar.about.com/od/tz/g/unigramterm.htm
This website was helpful in that it gives a basic definition of what Universal Grammar is and explores its different components.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Grammar
This website was very helpful because it elaborated on the more complex ideas of Universal Grammar and helped clear up some things that I was confused on.
This week I wanted to look more at dyslexia I wasn’t to look more it to this just because I think it is one of those disorders that no one really knows a lot about. When you look at these articles two are the same stating that it’s a reading or vision problem. I can see that I guess if you can’t see it right then you can’t read it right. But the last article that I looked at said there is something in the bran that interrupts the language. So you see it but you don’t comprehend it the right way. I can see how both are right and are linked together. I also read that there is a slight link with 25% of the kids that have dyslexia also have ADHD. And there are other learning disabilities linked with dyslexia. Still after reading this stuff I don’t have a real good grasp on what causes it. Dyslexia is more common in children than in adults. What is this telling us does the kid out grow it or does it go away or do adults learn to live with it or embarrassed to report it any more. Your guess is as good as mine. If you are looking for signs of it you may notice a pause in speech or the more common one is reading numbers or words backwards. This is something that has been known to run in families. Why is that? Is it because the kid learns from someone with dyslexia so that is the way they learn. Just like if a blind parent taught their kid to read by showing them brail would they be able to read by looking at the words or do they need to feel the bumps. I guess I looked and read more but I still don’t have all the answers that I want to know about dyslexia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyslexia
http://www.medicinenet.com/dyslexia/article.htm