Despite the fact that phobias are not contagious, they are widespread, and people suffer from them regardless of age, social status, ethnicity. Some people cannot stand the sight of insects, others panic if they find themselves in the dark—the list is endless. But if we are accustomed to the fact that more understandable phobias are a common phenomenon, then rare types of this disease can simply be surprising. Those people who are familiar with phobias from their own experience know what difficulties arise from this in life.
Acribophobia is a phobia that is fairly well known, but not very common. Translated from Greek, akribo means “I know for sure,” and the word phobos means fear. A person susceptible to this disease is constantly under the influence of the fear of not understanding the text being read and its semantic meaning. IN in this case It doesn’t matter what caused this fear, but in any case it is abnormal.
Interestingly, sometimes acribophobia can occur on its own, and in some cases it is a symptom accompanying other mental disorders, such as schizophrenia. There are cases when patients with schizophrenic disorder claim that they do not understand anything when reading the text. Phrases are perceived as something unrelated to each other; they represent a certain indefinite set of words. Those, in turn, break down into syllables or even individual letters and punctuation marks. As a result, the patient sees complete nonsense in front of him, even if the text is absolutely simple, understandable even to a first-grader.
Acribophobia often develops in students of various educational institutions. For example, a student claims that when exams approach, a real wave of fear rolls over him, and he constantly thinks that now he will take a ticket, and the question will be incomprehensible to him. And the scary thing is not that the student is poorly prepared, he just doesn’t understand what exactly he should talk about! As a result, when the crucial moment really comes, and the text appears before his eyes, the patient begins to panic, he becomes distracted, and cannot concentrate and understand the meaning of what is written. In such a situation, it sometimes helps if someone present reads the contents of the text out loud. But this is not always possible during the exam, unfortunately.
In most cases, people suffering from acribophobia are well aware that their fear is irrational, and therefore they try to somehow overcome it, not to show their painful condition to strangers, so as not to look strange in the eyes of others. But it is impossible to hide the signs of a phobia, although in certain cases this condition can be regarded as a manifestation of problems with the cardiovascular system, etc. A patient with acriophobia shows anxiety, becomes very nervous, his face turns red, and his pulse quickens. Breathing becomes heavy and intermittent. General weakness, dizziness, and tremor are also observed.
So is it possible to get rid of this obsessive fear? After all, if most other phobias are based on the subconscious instinct of self-preservation, then what does acribophobia mean, and where to look for its sources? Almost every psychologist, answering this question, will begin with the fact that the original source of the problem needs to be identified in the past; perhaps certain events in a person’s life are connected with this. In addition, sometimes people make an unfounded diagnosis for themselves, considering themselves acribophobic. But is this really so? If the meaning of what you read is unclear, you should take a few simple measures, for example, try not to focus your attention on what is happening around, but to delve into the meaning of what is written. In addition, you should be objective in assessing your own condition. Sometimes thoughts are occupied with something else, and the meaning of the text is not entirely clear for the simple reason that a person cannot concentrate on it. Another option is that there may indeed be a lack of certain knowledge if the text belongs to the category of special technical ones, and this area is completely unfamiliar to the person. In this case, it is completely natural that the meaning of what you read is unclear, no matter how much you re-read it.
This specific phobia has a significant element of dependence on the opinions of others. Acribophobes are always afraid that other people, such as colleagues or classmates, will consider them incompetent. In this case, the intervention of a psychotherapist is required, since the patient must realize at what stage it happened that he became completely dependent on the opinions of others, and this significance acquired catastrophic proportions.
When starting treatment, you should know that it will not be as fast as you would like. The doctor must figure out exactly when the patient began to react painfully to the opinions of others. First of all, an acribophobe must learn to perceive the situation differently. For example, when left alone with himself, a person must understand that no one is controlling him, and if the text is not clear to him the first time, then he can read it as many times as necessary, even ten times in a row. And most importantly, no one will criticize, make bad jokes, and so on. If the people around you are normal and have a friendly attitude towards a person prone to acribophobia, then they will not behave tactlessly, aggravating the situation. The best they can do is read aloud a certain paragraph that seems incomprehensible to the patient. In most cases, oral speech is perceived much easier, and after that the text seems not difficult.
Dyslexia is a disease in which a person cannot read text normally. This disorder is caused by poor development or destruction of mental functions involved in the reading process.
This disease is common in 5% of children with normal development. Dyslexia in children with developmental delays intellectual development occurs much more often - 20-55%. It has been established that the disorder in question is more common in boys.
In order to understand the characteristics of this disease, it is important to study the mechanisms of dyslexia. The following speech analyzers are involved in the reading process: motor, visual and auditory.
The perception of the text is carried out in the following stages: first, a person perceives the letters visually, with the eyes (recognizes, distinguishes them), then correlates these letters with sounds, then the sounds merge into syllables - words - sentences, and ultimately comes an understanding of the meaning of the text. Dyslexia is a violation of the order of these stages.
The symptoms of dyslexia are in most cases open in nature and can be easily diagnosed by a parent or specialist (teacher, speech therapist, psychologist). As mentioned above, the disease is detected more often in preschoolers, but there are cases when a person learns about the presence of dyslexia already in adulthood.
How to determine
When dyslexia is discovered in children, the symptoms are often layered and complex. The main list includes the following items:
- Difficult to read, poor handwriting.
- Slow reading pace that does not correspond to the norm for a given age (this sign is one of the most often used in diagnosis).
- Spell words backwards.
- While reading, a person touches his eyes, rubs them.
- Difficulty remembering geometric shapes, inability to recognize them.
- While reading or after reading, the child complains of a headache.
- The child misses words while reading.
- Reading a book with one eye.
- The child's constant desire to avoid the process of reading.
- Fatigue.
Diagnosis of dyslexia consists of analyzing cognitive abilities, assessing speech and mental functions. A speech therapist conducts an examination, including analysis of oral and written speech.
By obtaining a complete family history, aspects that influence reading disorders are identified. The doctor must check the functioning of hearing and vision in order to exclude other diseases that also have symptoms of dyslexia.
Typology
At the moment, there is an extensive classification of dyslexia, describing its types, forms and etiology. Detailed description presented below.
- Literary – difficulties in mastering individual letters.
- Verbal – problems reading words.
The following forms of dyslexia are distinguished:
1. Tactile. Typical for visually impaired children. A child confuses letters that feel similar to the touch when reading Braille.
2. Optical. It is a consequence of poorly formed visual-spatial concepts. The child confuses letters with similar spellings (Y-L, G-R).
3. Mnestic. Deformation of speech memory. It is difficult for a child to relate sounds and letters.
4. Ungrammatical. The reason for this type is the underdevelopment of generalizations of various forms of words. A child with this form of the disease:
- Incorrectly agrees nouns with adjectives (interesting story, beautiful vase);
- Makes mistakes in the endings of past tense verbs (ran out, preverbs);
- Changes the endings and numbers of nouns (in garages, in houses).
5. Semantic. Caused by poverty vocabulary. The child reads the text correctly, but does not understand what he read.
6. Phonemic. It is a consequence of underdeveloped phonemic hearing and associated difficulties in the analysis, synthesis and perception of speech. The child mixes sounds and does not differentiate words that differ in one letter but have completely different meanings (for example, pop - cop, forehead - lom).
Reasons
The main cause of dyslexia in children is a disorder of the neurobiological system. In this case, there is a disruption in the functioning of certain parts of the brain (the posterior part of the middle left temporal gyrus). In the perinatal period (the period from 28 weeks of pregnancy, the process of childbirth and the first 7 days of the child’s life), the following factors can serve as the reasons for this process:
- Toxic damage to the central nervous system(is a consequence of drug or alcohol intoxication, jaundice).
- Infection of the fetal brain (occurs when a pregnant woman suffers from infectious diseases).
- Mechanical damage to the brain (a consequence of rough manipulations to remove the fetus from the womb).
During the period from birth to death of a person, abnormalities in the functioning of the brain, leading to disruption of the reading process, can cause:
- Trauma to the skull.
- Chain of infections.
- Diseases of the central nervous system (cerebral palsy, mental retardation, mental retardation).
There are also several factors not related to the nervous system that cause dyslexia; its causes can be social:
1. Lack of oral communication with the child.
2. “Hospitalism” syndrome (somatic and mental disorders caused by a person’s long stay in a hospital and isolation from the society of loved ones).
3. Pedagogical neglect.
4. Fast pace of learning.
5. Bilingualism (often found in families where parents are native speakers different languages); teaching a child several languages at once.
It has been proven that dyslexia can be caused by heredity. There are a number of genes that contribute to the development of this disease.
What to do
Treatment of dyslexia in children occurs within the framework of a system of classes with a speech therapist. The program is structured depending on the form of the disease:
- The phonemic form is eliminated by correcting defects in the pronunciation of sounds.
- Correction of semantic dyslexia includes vocabulary development.
- With an agrammatic form, the child develops a new, correct grammatical system for the formation of words and forms.
- Elimination of the mnestic form occurs through the development of visual and auditory factors associated with speech.
- With the optical form, a change in visual analysis is carried out.
- Tactile dyslexia requires the development of the ability to distinguish objects by touch.
Dyslexia is most often a childhood disease, but there are cases when the disease is not diagnosed in the preschool or school period, thus remaining in a person until adulthood. This raises the question: what to do when dyslexia is discovered in adults?
Age-related dyslexia has a protracted and severe nature; what it is, an adult can only find out by being in an environment where there are people familiar with this disease. In most cases, an adult with this disease is considered lazy and stupid, not even suspecting that learning problems are caused by a serious illness.
Correction
The following methods can be used to correct dyslexia:
1. Presentation of written information in an accessible form. For example, to make text more readable for a person with dyslexia, you need to align it to the edge rather than to the width.
2. Present information in a form that is convenient for a patient with dyslexia. Most often, an adult with dyslexia knows a way of perceiving information that is comfortable for him. These can be maps, tables, separate presentation of numbers and words, and more.
3. Create individual conditions. A person with dyslexia can perceive information faster under certain conditions. This could be a solitary workplace, a longer time to complete a task, special software, the presence of an assistant, changing the format of documents (for example, translation from printed text to audio format - there are many modern programs for this).
4. Use a simple and clear font. It is more comfortable for a person to read a font that has an even structure, sans serif, size (for example, Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica and others).
5. Present the text on high quality paper. Use thick, non-transparent paper.
Since most adults are unaware of their illness, it is important to tell the person about it in the correct form and recommend good specialist in this area. Please remember that in this case you are responsible for the confidentiality of information.
And the most important advice
illness when you can't read
In the Education section, the question is: what is the name of the disease when people read poorly? asked by the author Anyuta) the best answer is The ability to read is considered mandatory for every person.
However, for some people these simple actions are real torment. They suffer from a rare disease. Deslexia is a reading disorder, and dysgraphia is a writing disorder. In the world, there are from 5% to 15% of people with deslexia and dysgraphia. Many great people suffered from this disease - W. Churchill, A. Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, G. H. Anderson, V. Mayakovsky. Among Hollywood stars, for example, Tom Cruise. D. Bush Jr. does not hide his illness. Just recently it became clear interesting fact: Most people suffering from deslexia are among rich people. There are few Russian names in the list of “sick geniuses”, because in our country deslexia was called illiteracy and everything was attributed to the student’s poor diligence. Therefore, in our society it is not customary to discuss this problem even among public people.
Bad students in reading?
Beztolochism is chronic and turns into protracted dibelism.
If you are a child, try raising the book above your eyes. The level of perception of the lower and upper hemispheres is different.
It is possible that this is dysgraphia or dyslexia. Now this is not uncommon. But the cause of the disease, no matter what it is called, is still that the student is afraid of not being successful and resists violence.
Inability to read is a disease
Some children, no matter how much you teach them and how many books you read, still even the most simple words They can’t write without mistakes. Previously, they were put in a corner, left without sweets, and scolded in every possible way.
Only later did scientists realize that this disease is dyslexia, and it is expressed in the fact that children cannot recognize words, just as, say, color-blind people cannot distinguish colors. Millions of people suffer from this disease, who were once bullied at school and accused of stupidity and laziness. But no one scolds the deaf or blind! Why should dyslexics suffer?
Recent advances in science give hope that dyslexia can be overcome. Oxford specialists proved its genetic nature.
“We have received confirmation that one of the regions on the sixth human chromosome is strongly associated with dyslexia. This is precisely a confirmation, not a discovery, because the Americans were the first to stumble upon this fact in 1994. But their result was not as certain as ours. Now let’s try to influence the brain neurons responsible for this disease, which are directly connected to a section of the sixth chromosome,” says research leader Professor John Stein.
It is curious that Professor Stein himself is not inclined to consider dyslexia a disease. According to him, it often gives people important advantages in life. His main trump card is the famous architect Richard Rogers, creator of the Pompidou Center in Paris, who is convinced: only dyslexics have the spatial imagination necessary for an architect.
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7 most unusual diseases
Today, science knows a number of very real diseases that even the greatest hypochondriacs cannot invent: persistent unwanted orgasms, the inability to feel fear, or strange fibers growing from the skin. In addition to unusual symptoms, such diseases have not yet been studied, and their treatment is either impossible or ineffective. At least at this stage of medical development.
We have collected 7 extremely strange diseases and will now look at them in order.
Everyone is familiar with the feeling of “goosebumps,” but some people claim that they actually feel something crawling under their skin. Those with Morgellons disease describe their condition as follows: severe itching and an acute sensation that insects are crawling under the skin. Patients also report threads or fibers growing from the skin and may experience fatigue and memory problems. The cause of the disease is not clear. Some researchers claim the symptoms are due to mental illness, while others say the illness is caused by an unknown infectious agent.
The movie Dr. Strangelove tells the story of a man with one arm and a mind of his own. In medicine, a disease with similar symptoms is known as “Alien Hand Syndrome.” For example, in 1998, one of the journals devoted to neuralgia and neurosurgery described the story of an 81-year-old woman whose left hand was uncontrollable. The left hand involuntarily strangled her neck and hit her face and shoulders.
This is a rare condition where people think that they have either died or some organs or parts of their body have died. According to a 2002 article published in the Journal of Neuroscience, patients may also believe that their soul has died.
This disease is characterized by the ability to bend limbs in seemingly impossible directions. Many people with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome also have super-elastic skin, but they experience delayed wound healing. Half of patients with this syndrome have genetic mutations.
A rare genetic disease in which a person does not experience a feeling of fear and does not perceive sources of mortal danger as something threatening. The researchers concluded that the feeling of fear is interconnected with the amygdala-shaped structures in the brain and this discovery may be useful in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder. But how to make such “clinically fearless” people afraid has not yet been figured out.
Persistent sexual arousal syndrome
For people susceptible to this disease, orgasm brings mostly embarrassment and suffering rather than pleasant sensations. The fact is that orgasm happens often and, moreover, wherever and whenever. The syndrome was first diagnosed in 2001 and occurs predominantly in women. The syndrome is characterized by hypersensitivity, which is why the slightest pressure can cause orgasm. The cause of the disease has not been established.
This is a condition in which a person cries tears of blood. The disease is more often observed in women of childbearing age during menstruation. Hemolacria can also occur as a result of severe conjunctivitis.
Dyslexia: general information, symptoms of the disease
As such, there is no definition for the disease dyslexia, but the International Association gives something like a decoding for this disease. In general, dyslaxia is the inability to recognize words and read. These disorders originate from congenital inferiority of the nervous system. Speaking in simple language, this is the inability to read (the brain simply does not recognize the information received).
General information about the disease
Despite the fact that dyslexia is the inability to read, this disease is not classified as mental retardation. Worth paying special attention that this disease is extremely difficult to diagnose. Firstly, the professionalism of the doctor you contact is very important. Many factors will be taken into account when making a diagnosis. Your child will likely be given a text to read aloud. In this case, the doctor will not just look at the reading speed, but will also note those moments that were difficult. But this is just the first stage of diagnosis.
Almost all tests that a speech therapist will administer will be designed to measure hearing and speech production. The specialist will also look at what information the child learns better, orally or tactilely (when performing various types of tasks). As a result, the doctor will determine how effectively the 3 components of sensory speech operate.
This disease has no specific symptoms. They manifest themselves differently in each patient. Dyslexia is sometimes also called “word blindness.” This occurs because one part of the brain decreases its activity. By the way, dyslexia is a fairly common disease; it is diagnosed in one form or another in 6-10% of the population. It's time to consider all the details of this disease.
This type of dyslexia is most often diagnosed in children. primary classes. This is primarily due to the weak development of functions that are precisely characteristic of phonetic system. The difference between one phoneme and another is a large number of different features (for example, deafness and voicedness). When at least one phoneme changes in a word, it takes on a completely different meaning, for example, dew-braid. As you can see, one letter has changed and the words began to have a different meaning. With phonemic dyslexia, the child is unable to recognize the difference between two words. He simply mixes up all the sounds in his head, they turn into “porridge”.
This type of dyslexia is also called “rote reading.” This means that the child absolutely does not understand what he read, while his reading itself is fine, it is completely correct. This deviation is caused by two factors, namely difficulties associated primarily with sound-syllable synthesis, as well as a lack of understanding of the syntactic connections that are located in sentences. In another way, we can say that the brain perceives all words separately, and not in sentences.
This is the most common type of dyslexia among children. It is characterized by partial underdevelopment of speech. This is well expressed when a child reads and talks. With dyslexia of this type, the child constantly changes case endings (even in nouns), incorrectly agrees case, and changes endings in all verbs that refer to the third person past tense.
With this type of disease, the brain does not recognize graphic symbols, including letters. Because of this, he cannot read.
The child does not understand which sound this or that letter should correspond to. He cannot master or learn letters.
Symptoms of dyslexia
This disease, like all others, has special symptoms. Although it would be more accurate to call them problems that people with this disease constantly face. Here is a list of the most common ones:
- There is a fairly large delay in the child’s development, which is especially evident in the ability to write and read;
- disorganization;
- great difficulties with the perception of various information;
- difficulty remembering banal words.
- complete misunderstanding of the text being read;
- some coordination disorders:
- Sometimes this disease can also manifest itself in hyperactivity.
Please note that all of the above symptoms are also symptoms of a disease such as disorientation. Unlike dyslexia, this disease can be diagnosed quite easily and does not take much time. Therefore, sometimes, in order to find out whether a child has dyslaxia, an orientation test is carried out, because it includes the accuracy of perception of the surrounding world, people, as well as the perception of graphic signs, words, sentences.
There are also other symptoms that a person with dyslaxia suffers from:
- The child's intelligence is at a fairly high level, but big problems with reading available;
- constant, natural repetition of mistakes made, for example, missing a word.
- the child absolutely does not have time to complete the task assigned to him in the required time;
- great difficulty in writing;
- in general, the child has a poor memory, he does not remember basic things;
- Such children often have significant vision problems;
- The baby cannot determine the top of the text.
Causes of a disease such as dyslexia
Many studies confirm that this disease occurs due to problems that are neurobiological in nature. In this case, some areas of the brain have much less activity. There are also some differences in the structure of the brain tissue itself. By the way, it has been scientifically proven that this disease can be transmitted hereditarily. Special genes have been discovered that are precisely responsible for the appearance of this disease.
Can dyslexia be cured? If so, how?
This disease accompanies the sick person throughout his life, which creates a lot of trouble for him. Of course, there were cases when some people still managed to learn to read sooner or later. But this is rare. Typically, a person with dyslexia remains illiterate for the rest of their life.
The peculiarity of the treatment of this disease mainly lies in the fact that the entire educational process is corrected, this also includes direct and indirect training in recognizing words and sentences. They also teach the skill of highlighting certain components in words. In the case of direct teaching, the so-called special type of phonetics methods are used.
In general, a wide variety of teaching methods can be used. The main thing is that they include comprehensive training not only in reading some expressions and words, but also the entire text. You can also use different approaches in which we are talking about acquiring many skills, starting from the most basic and ending at a higher level. Additionally, many medical professionals recommend using approaches that aim to target multiple senses.
Illness when you can't read
The ability to read and write is considered mandatory for every person. However, for some people these simple actions are real torment. They suffer from a rare disease - dyslexia. This disease is also called “word blindness” and is associated with decreased brain activity in a certain area of the left hemisphere.
Who had dyslexia?
Many great people suffered from dyslexia - Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Hans Christian Andersen, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Soviet actor Nikolai Gritsenko. Among Hollywood celebrities There are also a lot of dyslexics. For example, Tom Cruise. George Bush Jr. does not hide his “illness.” Swedish Crown Princess Victoria also suffers from a lack of ability to read. She recently admitted that from early childhood, classmates bullied her because she suffered from dyslexia. Jerry Hall has admitted that all four of her children with rock star Mick Jagger suffer from dyslexia: 23-year-old model Elizabeth, 21-year-old James, 15-year-old Georgia May and 9-year-old Gabriel were diagnosed with the same speech disorder.
What is dyslexia?
Dyslexia is a reading disorder, and dysgraphia is a writing disorder. These disorders are explained by the structural features of the brain, which complicate the process of relating sounds and letters, writing and speech. In the world, between 5% and 15% of people with dyslexia and dysgraphia are well read.
Most dyslexics are among the rich
Quite recently, an interesting fact emerged: the majority of people suffering from dyslexia are among the rich. According to a study by British doctors, 40% of rich people cannot write or read correctly. The most famous of them is Richard Branson, the head of a telecommunications company. Scientists have been studying dyslexia for more than 100 years, but there is still debate about what it is, how to recognize it and why it occurs.
There are few Russian names on the list of “sick” geniuses, because in our country dyslexia was called illiteracy and everything was attributed to the student’s poor diligence. Therefore, in our society it is not customary to discuss this problem even among public people. Although all the factors influencing the development of the disease are still unknown to scientists, many experts believe that dyslexia is genetic. Simply put, there is a difference in the “architecture” of the brain that makes it difficult to “decode” the meaning of a printed word.
It is known that the process of reading in the brains of women and men is implemented differently. Doctors, in particular, have found that boys suffer from dyslexia 2-3 times more often than girls. Unfortunately, there are no methods for treating this disease yet. But there are a lot of myths about this disease. Here are the most common:
But in fact, the cause of dyslexia and dysgraphia is the synchronicity in the work of the right and left hemispheres of the brain. Only very recently have scientists come to the realization that the problems associated with “lack of mental abilities”, are determined not so much by brain defects as by ignorance of its enormous potential capabilities.
If dyslexia is identified before school, it will be easier for the child to learn.
In fact, in the current education system, dyslexics will always find it excruciatingly painful to learn. The modern verbal, formal-rational school, built on the immobility of the child, grossly ignores educational process activity of the senses, giving priority to instructive and programming teaching methods. Mechanical memory is poison for a student with dyslexia and dysgraphia.
A dyslexic person writes illiterately and clumsily
But in fact, modern research shows that the motivation to write correctly is stronger than the natural illiteracy of a dyslexic. It is not the training itself that is important, but the “exercise that requires effort,” when a person constantly tries to solve problems that are somewhat beyond his capabilities.
Dyslexic is completely normal
No, that's not true. Dyslexics stand out from the norm, because their brain activity is organized in a special way and determines the uniqueness of their intellectual abilities.
Dyslexia goes away with age
Nothing of the kind. Dyslexia does not come and go with age. Either a person has dyslexia or they don’t. Dyslexics are born.
Dyslexia can be cured
No, there is no treatment. Geniuses have always been treated! It is this genetic memory of individual representatives of our time that gives rise to the myth that dyslexia must be treated. Genius cannot be cured, it manifests itself and now it has the power to resist doctors.
This is not a disease, it is a diagnosis that allows you to highlight an organized person in a special way. A dyslexic person clearly exhibits peculiarities in reading and writing linear text, as he perceives information in a three-dimensional format. For this reason, those printed words and symbols that he cannot imagine figuratively leave voids in his perception and cause a state of confusion. It is the state of confusion that determines difficulties with the perception of information, disorganization, clumsiness, disorientation in space, attention deficit, hyper- or hypoactivity.
How to treat dyslexia?
According to professionals, it is better to do nothing regarding a child with dyslexia than to commit illiterate actions. In this case, the child will be able to find his own solution, which will be correct! Therefore, dear parents, take a closer look at your child. Consult with professionals. They can be found now. And it is quite likely that you will have a unique plant growing. Don't ruin it. Otherwise, it will be painfully embarrassing in about thirty years, when a grown-up child forgets to thank his parents in his speech on the occasion of being awarded the Nobel Prize...
IA No. FS77−55373 dated September 17, 2013, issued Federal service for supervision in the field of communications, information technology and mass communications (Roskomnadzor). Founder: PRAVDA.Ru LLC
Diagnosis: cannot read
Not all children learn to read easily and quickly. The reasons for this can be very different. This does not mean that the child is lazy. In addition, we must keep in mind that the problem of dyslexia sometimes gets in the way of learning to read. This is a violation when a person constantly makes mistakes when reading, sometimes cannot read the text, swallows parts of words and sometimes simply does not understand the meaning of what is written. As a result of problems with reading, problems with writing arise. Moreover, people in all countries of the world suffer from dyslexia, and quite often. According to world statistics, every tenth person in the world is dyslexic! Candidate of Psychological Sciences Lyubov MOSHINSKAYA talks about what dyslexia is and how to overcome it.
Parents must first of all have patience and endurance. Not all children learn to read easily and quickly. The reasons for this can be very different. This does not mean that the child is lazy. In addition, we must keep in mind that the problem of dyslexia sometimes gets in the way of learning to read. This is a violation when a person constantly makes mistakes when reading, sometimes cannot read the text, swallows parts of words and sometimes simply does not understand the meaning of what is written. As a result of problems with reading, problems with writing arise. Moreover, people in all countries of the world suffer from dyslexia, and quite often. According to world statistics, every tenth person in the world is dyslexic! Candidate of Psychological Sciences Lyubov MOSHINSKAYA talks about what dyslexia is and how to overcome it.
MORE than 100 years ago, in 1896, the English doctor Morgan published an article in which he described a fourteen-year-old boy who differed from his peers in only one thing: he could not read. Otherwise, he was in no way inferior to them: he was dexterous and smart in the game, loved mathematics, and spoke beautifully and convincingly. But he couldn’t read what was written on the paper.
The assumption was that such children simply do not see the text. And then, naturally, they need to be treated by an ophthalmologist. Ophthalmologists slipped children lines with large print, tried to teach them to read at least in this way. Nothing worked.
Further examinations confirmed that the vision of such “strange children” is generally in perfect order. Dr. Morgan suggested that they had a problem with their hearing! That is, they hear something, but “not like that.” This feature was called the word “dyslexia”. Today, this term refers to various deviations and difficulties in reading.
In order for a person to start reading, he must be taught to distinguish individual sounds in a word. In the overwhelming majority of cases, all children “skip through” this initial stage quickly and easily, distinguishing sounds in a word automatically and correlating them with letters. For dyslexics, the problem is that they are not able to connect sound and symbol, so they get “stuck” in this initial phase.
The number of phonemes, as a rule, does not coincide with the number of letters. For example, in the Russian language there are 39 such indivisible particles of language (phonemes), and only 33 letters. Thus, the word “cat” consists of three phonemes: k, o, t. As a rule, people understand this. But dyslexics hear the word “cat” as one sound!
For MANY years, scientists have been trying to figure out why this happens? Assumptions were confirmed that dyslexia is associated with improper functioning of one of the areas of the cerebral cortex.
Research using brain scans has shown that when dyslexics try to separate words into sounds, activation of certain areas in the back of the brain decreases. But at the same time, some areas of the frontal part are activated.
One study compared the brain scans of six boys with dyslexia and seven healthy boys. The scans were performed while performing three different tasks: pronouncing two musical tones separately, separating meaningful words from quasi-words (nonsense words), and selecting rhyming syllables.
Differences were only found during the final task - dyslexics scored lower, and scans showed that there was increased activation in the frontal lobes of the brain. This led the researchers to assume that dyslexics have to expend much more effort on analyzing sound patterns.
Recently appeared new technology- functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMTI). It allows you to monitor blood flow in the brain - those areas that are most abundantly supplied with blood work more intensely. Gradually, scientists came to the conclusion that increased activity occurs in those areas of the brain that are responsible for speech. Scientists have suggested that dyslexics try to "get close" to the sounds that make up words in other ways - for example, by muttering them under their breath. Ineffective pathways in the brain may be one of the causes of dyslexia.
THANKS TO all this research, scientists now have a much better understanding of how the human brain processes written text. It became clear that mastering reading skills is not the same natural process as well as the ability to speak.
Almost all human beings master speech in the same way: humming, muttering, using single words, two-word sentences - and the transition to full speech.
Scientists believe that speech is about a century old, while writing is quite young - it is no more than 5,000 years old. Perhaps this is why a child has to make special efforts to master written speech.
The sooner you can recognize the symptoms of dyslexia in your child, the more effectively you can help him. Scientists believe that basic reading skills are best acquired between the ages of 5 and 7 years. Children who are at risk can be trained for 30 minutes a day already in kindergarten.
If you first realized it when the child was already 8-9 years old, it will take two hours of daily special exercises.
Can parents themselves, even before school, identify symptoms of dyslexia in their child? Yes!
The first and most simple test - preschoolers are asked to name the sounds corresponding to certain letters and letter combinations. If it is difficult for a child to do this, he makes a lot of mistakes, or has difficulty completing this task, he should be sent for a more serious test.
In the future, it may be possible to track the problem even in early age. American scientists studied electrical waves in the brains of infants and correlated these observations with the reading skills of the same children at the age of 8 years. They found that infants who later had trouble reading responded to a series of taps more slowly, perhaps because their brains were unable to process the sounds.
It is not very clear how these data fit into the overall picture. Some experts believe that such a lag is associated with another harbinger of reading difficulties - insufficient “fast naming” skills, when the child is required to quickly name well-known letters and numbers. In this case, the speed of establishing a connection between a visual symbol and its sound analogue is measured. This skill is the basis of learning to read.
Quite a lot of research is being carried out in THIS direction. For example, there is a program in which children are taught to distinguish the sensations that arise when pronouncing certain sounds. Consonant sounds are designated according to the movements accompanying their pronunciation. For example, [p] is called “ppaf!” - after all, to pronounce this sound, the lips first close, and then the exhaled air, like a shot, opens them. Thus, children master a new way of recognizing sounds. Why is this method more effective than the usual one? One reason appears to be that it helps dyslexics overcome a major obstacle - the inability to separate words into sounds. They may not be able to isolate sounds in a word by ear, but they are very sensitive to individual movements made by the articulatory apparatus. Scientists are now trying to figure out what changes occur in brain activity during such learning.
Dyslexics also need intensive help in the area of so-called phonetic awareness - dividing words into sounds. Another important point- teaching letters corresponding to certain sounds. The expediency of such training is not subject to discussion - this material must simply be learned. And lastly, you need to constantly practice; for example, reading interesting stories develops reading fluency, increases vocabulary, and improves reading comprehension. Of course, these components are in any case necessary when teaching reading, but it is especially important to pay attention to them when teaching dyslexics.
Unfortunately, at present, teachers are not sufficiently trained to work with dyslexics, and therefore the entire burden of dealing with the disease falls on the shoulders of parents. They can do a lot before the child will go to school: language games develop the ability to manipulate sounds in words. As much attention as possible should be paid to playing with rhymes and words. This is, of course, not a 100% guarantee of success, but scientific research suggests that children who work hard with rhymes tend to hear the individual sounds of a language better.
When do children start visiting? kindergarten, parents should closely monitor the child’s development so as not to miss the first symptoms of retardation, if any. It is not always easy to find a qualified specialist on this issue, so parents will have to actively gather information, be determined and persistent in finding educational programs for their child. After all, this is your child, and it is absolutely not his fault that he was born this way. The predisposition to dyslexia generally has genetic roots. So it is likely that your child “owes” his reading difficulties to your great-grandmother - the genes were at work. Do not under any circumstances accuse your child of laziness and stupidity! Remember that what children with dyslexia need perhaps most is emotional support. After all, they have school ahead of them.
- Hans Christian Andersen composed his fairy tales in his head at night, and in the morning he tried to write them down and take them to publishing houses. Repeatedly, texts were returned to him without even reading them to the end, due to the amazing illiteracy of the author. On one manuscript, the editor wrote the following inscription: “A person who mocks his native Danish language like that cannot be a writer.”
Every parent dreams that their child will be born healthy and grow up beautiful and smart. Fortunately, in most cases this happens, but sometimes there are unpleasant exceptions.
Modern medicine has come a long way, and many dangerous diseases are already curable. But there are rare and strange diseases that have not yet been studied enough. Even the best doctors are unable to understand the causes of their occurrence and help people who suffer from them.
1. Dysgraphia, dyslexia, dyscalcuria
At first, everything looks completely normal: the child grows, plays, learns. But at certain times, parents are faced with strange problems. It is absolutely impossible to teach their children to read, write, and count. What is the reason and what to do? Is it just laziness or some strange disease?
Written speech consists of two types of speech activity - writing and reading. Strange and somewhat scary words like dysgraphia and dyslexia mean the inability or difficulty in mastering writing and reading. Most often they are observed simultaneously, but sometimes they can occur separately. A complete inability to read is called alexia, a complete inability to write is called agraphia.
Many doctors do not consider these deviations to be a disease, but attribute them to the structural features of the brain with a completely different worldview and a different view of familiar things. Dyslexia should be corrected, not cured. The inability to read and write can be complete or partial: the inability to understand letters and symbols, entire words and sentences, or complete text. A child can be taught to write, but at the same time he makes a lot of blots and confuses letters and symbols. And, of course, this does not happen because of inattention or laziness. This needs to be understood. This child needs specialist help.
The previous symptoms are often accompanied by another unpleasant symptom – dyscalcuria. It is characterized by an inability to understand numbers, which is likely due to an inability to understand letters and symbols when reading. Sometimes children perform operations with numbers in their heads quite well, but they cannot complete tasks described in text. This probably happens because a person does not have the ability to perceive the text as a whole.
Unfortunately, modern medicine does not yet provide a definite answer to the question of why a dyslexic cannot learn to read, write, or count either at 6 or 12 years old, or as an adult.
2. Dyspraxia - lack of coordination
This deviation from the norm is characterized by the inability to perform any simple steps, for example, brushing your teeth or tying your shoelaces. The trouble for parents is that they do not understand the peculiarities of this behavior, and instead of paying due attention, they show anger and irritation.
But, in addition to childhood diseases, there are many such, no less strange, ailments that a person encounters already in childhood. adult life. You most likely have never even heard of some of them.
3. Micropsia or Alice in Wonderland syndrome
This is, fortunately, a fairly rare neurological disorder that affects people's visual perception. Patients see people, animals and objects around them much smaller than they really are. In addition, the distances between them appear distorted. This disease is often called “Lilliputian vision,” although it affects not only vision, but also hearing and touch. Even your own body may seem completely different. Typically, the syndrome continues even when the eyes are closed and more often appears with the onset of darkness, when the brain lacks information about the size of surrounding objects.
4. Stendhal syndrome
A person may not even realize that he has a disease of this kind until his first visit to an art gallery. When he gets into a place where there is a large number of art objects, he begins to experience severe symptoms of a panic attack: rapid heartbeat, dizziness, increased heart rate and even hallucinations. In one of the galleries in Florence, such cases often occurred with tourists, which served as the basis for the description of this disease. This disease got its name thanks to the famous writer Stendhal, who described similar symptoms in his book “Naples and Florence.”
5. Maine Jumping Frenchman Syndrome
The main symptom of this rather rare genetic disease is considered to be severe fear. Such patients, at the slightest sound stimulus, jump up, scream, wave their arms, then fall, roll on the floor and cannot calm down for a long time. This disease was first recorded in the United States in 1878 by a French lumberjack in Maine. This is where its name comes from. Another name for it is heightened reflection.
6. Urbach-Wiethe disease
Sometimes this more than strange disease is called the “brave lion” syndrome. This is a very rare genetic disease, the main symptom of which is an almost complete absence of fear. Numerous studies have shown that the absence of fear is not the cause of the disease, but is a consequence of the destruction of the amygdala of the brain. Typically, such patients have a hoarse voice and wrinkled skin. Fortunately, since the discovery of this disease, less than 300 cases of its manifestation have been recorded in the medical literature.
7. Alien hand syndrome
This is a complex neuropsychiatric disease, which is characterized by the fact that one or both of the patient’s hands act as if on their own. German neurologist Kurt Goldstein first described the symptoms of this strange disease when he observed his patient. During sleep, her left hand, acting according to some incomprehensible rules of its own, suddenly began to strangle its “mistress.” This strange disease occurs due to damage to the transmission of signals between the hemispheres of the brain. With such a disease, you can harm yourself without realizing what is happening.
Speech disorders in modern world occur quite often in both adults and children. For the correct functioning of speech, in addition to the absence of problems in the vocal apparatus itself, the coordinated work of visual and auditory analyzers, the brain and other parts of the nervous system is necessary.
A speech disorder is a disorder of speech skills that can be caused by various reasons. Let's look at the most common diseases:
Stuttering
Stuttering, or logoneurosis, is one of the most common deviations. This disorder is expressed in the periodic repetition of individual syllables or sounds during a conversation. In addition, convulsive pauses may occur in a person’s speech.
There are several types of stuttering:
- Tonic appearance – frequent stops in speech and prolongation of words.
- Clonic - repetition of syllables and sounds.
Stuttering can be triggered and aggravated by stress, emotional situations and shocks, such as speaking in front of a large number of people.
Logoneurosis occurs in adults and children. The causes of its occurrence may be neurological and genetic factors. With timely diagnosis and initiation of treatment, it is possible to completely get rid of this problem. There are many treatment methods - both medical (physiotherapeutic, speech therapy, medication, psychotherapeutic) and traditional medicine.
A disease characterized by slurred speech and problems articulating sounds. Appears due to disorders in the central nervous system.
One of characteristic features This disease can be called reduced mobility of the speech apparatus - lips, tongue, soft palate, which complicates articulation and is due to insufficient innervation of the speech apparatus (the presence of nerve endings in tissues and organs, which ensures communication with the central nervous system).
Types of violation:
- Erased dysarthria is not a very pronounced disease. The person does not have problems with hearing and speech apparatus, but has difficulties in sound pronunciation.
- Severe dysarthria - characterized by incomprehensible, slurred speech, disturbances in intonation, breathing, and voice.
- Anarthria is a form of disease in which a person is unable to speak clearly.
This disorder requires complex treatment: speech therapy correction, drug intervention, physical therapy.
Dislalia
Tongue-tied is a disease in which a person pronounces certain sounds incorrectly, misses them, or replaces them with others. This disorder usually occurs in people with normal hearing and innervation of the articulatory apparatus. Typically, treatment is carried out with speech therapy intervention.
This is one of the most common speech disorders, which is found in about 25% of children. preschool age. With timely diagnosis, the disorder can be corrected quite successfully. Preschool children perceive correction much more easily than schoolchildren.
A condition that often occurs in people who have had an epileptic seizure. Characterized by poor vocabulary or simplified sentence construction.
Oligophasia can be:
- Temporary – acute oligophasia caused by an epileptic seizure;
- Progressive - interictal oligophasia, which occurs with the development of epileptic dementia.
The disease can also occur with disorders in the frontal lobe of the brain and some mental disorders.
Aphasia
A speech disorder in which a person cannot understand someone else’s speech and express his own thoughts using words and phrases. The disorder occurs when the centers responsible for speech are damaged in the cerebral cortex, namely, in the dominant hemisphere.
The cause of the disease can be:
- cerebral hemorrhage;
- abscess;
- traumatic brain injury;
- thrombosis of cerebral vessels.
There are several categories of this violation:
- – a person is not able to pronounce words, but can make sounds and understand someone else’s speech.
- Sensory aphasia - a person can speak, but cannot understand someone else's speech.
- Semantic aphasia – a person’s speech is not impaired and he is able to hear, but cannot understand the semantic relationships between words.
- Amnestic aphasia is a disease in which a person forgets the name of an object, but is able to describe its function and purpose.
- Total aphasia - a person is unable to speak, write, read or understand the speech of another.
Since aphasia is not a mental disorder, to treat it it is necessary to eliminate the cause of the disease.
Akatophasia
A speech disorder characterized by replacement necessary words for words that sound similar, but do not have the same meaning.
Schizophasia
A psychiatric speech disorder characterized by speech fragmentation and incorrect semantic structure of speech. A person is able to form phrases, but his speech does not make any sense, it is nonsense. This disorder is most common in patients with schizophrenia.
Paraphasia
A speech disorder in which a person confuses individual letters or words and replaces them with the wrong ones.
There are two types of violation:
- Verbal - replacing words that are similar in meaning.
- Literal – caused by sensory or motor speech problems.
A developmental disorder in children in which there are deficiencies in the use of expressive means speech. At the same time, children are able to express thoughts and understand the meaning of someone else's speech.
Symptoms of this disorder also include:
- small vocabulary;
- grammatical errors - incorrect use of declensions and cases;
- low speech activity.
This disorder can be transmitted at the genetic level, and is more common in men. Diagnosed during examination by a speech therapist, psychologist or neurologist. For treatment, psychotherapeutic methods are mainly used; in some situations, medication is prescribed.
Logoclony
A disease expressed in the periodic repetition of syllables or individual words.
This disorder is provoked by problems with contraction of the muscles that are involved in the speech process. Muscle spasms are repeated one after another due to deviations in the rhythm of contractions. This disease can accompany Alzheimer's disease, progressive paralysis, and encephalitis.
Most speech disorders can be corrected and treated if detected early. Be attentive to your health and contact a specialist if you notice any deviations.
Treatment of speech disorder
The ability to read and write is considered mandatory for every person. However, for some people these simple actions are real torment. They suffer from a rare disease - dyslexia. This disease is also called “word blindness” and is associated with decreased brain function in a certain area of the left hemisphere.
Who had dyslexia?
Many great people suffered from dyslexia - Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Hans Christian Andersen, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Soviet actor Nikolai Gritsenko. There are also many dyslexics among Hollywood celebrities. For example, Tom Cruise. George Bush Jr. does not hide his “illness.” Swedish Crown Princess Victoria also suffers from a lack of ability to read. She recently admitted that from early childhood, classmates bullied her because she suffered from dyslexia. Jerry Hall admitted that all four of her children with rock star Mick Jagger suffer from dyslexia: 23-year-old model Elizabeth, 21-year-old James, 15-year-old Georgia May and 9-year-old Gabriel were diagnosed with the same speech disorder.
What is dyslexia?
Dyslexia is a reading disorder, and dysgraphia is a writing disorder.. These disorders are explained by the structural features of the brain, which complicate the process of relating sounds and letters, writing and speech. In the world, between 5% and 15% of people with dyslexia and dysgraphia are well read.
Most dyslexics are among the rich
Quite recently, an interesting fact emerged: most people suffering from dyslexia are among the rich. According to a study by British doctors, 40% of rich people cannot read or write correctly.. The most famous of them is Richard Branson, the head of a telecommunications company. Scientists have been studying dyslexia for more than 100 years, but there is still debate about what it is, how to recognize it and why it occurs.
There are few Russian names on the list of “sick” geniuses, because in our country dyslexia was called illiteracy and everything was attributed to the student’s poor diligence. Therefore, in our society it is not customary to discuss this problem even among public people. Although all the factors influencing the development of the disease are still unknown to scientists, many experts believe that dyslexia is genetic. Simply put, there is a difference in the “architecture” of the brain that makes it difficult to “decode” the meaning of a printed word.
Boys more often than girls
It is known that the process of reading in the brains of women and men is implemented differently. Doctors, in particular, have found that boys suffer from dyslexia 2-3 times more often than girls. Unfortunately, there are no methods for treating this disease yet. But there are a lot of myths about this disease. Here are the most common:
What is the cause of dyslexia?
But in fact, the cause of dyslexia and dysgraphia is the synchronicity in the work of the right and left hemispheres of the brain. Only very recently have scientists come to the realization that problems associated with “lack of mental abilities” are determined not so much by defects in the brain as by ignorance of its enormous capabilities.
If dyslexia is identified before school, it will be easier for the child to learn.
In fact, in the current education system, dyslexics will always find it excruciatingly painful to learn. The modern verbal, formal-rational school, built on the immobility of the child, grossly ignores the activity of the senses in the educational process, giving priority to instructive-programming teaching methods. Rote memory is poison for a student with dyslexia and dysgraphia.
A dyslexic person writes illiterately and clumsily
But in fact, modern research shows that the motivation to write correctly is stronger than the natural illiteracy of a dyslexic. It is not the training itself that is important, but the “exercise that requires effort,” when a person constantly tries to solve problems that are somewhat beyond his capabilities.
Dyslexic is completely normal
No, that's not true. Dyslexics stand out from the norm, because their brain activity is organized in a special way and determines the uniqueness of their intellectual abilities.
Dyslexia goes away with age
Nothing of the kind. Dyslexia does not come and go with age. Either a person has dyslexia or they don’t. Dyslexics are born.
Dyslexia can be cured
No, there is no treatment. Geniuses have always been treated! It is this genetic memory of individual representatives of our time that gives rise to the myth that dyslexia must be treated. Genius cannot be cured, it manifests itself and now it has the power to resist doctors.
Dyslexia is a disease
This is not a disease, it is a diagnosis that allows you to highlight an organized person in a special way. A dyslexic person clearly exhibits peculiarities in reading and writing linear text, as he perceives information in a three-dimensional format. For this reason, those printed words and symbols that he cannot imagine figuratively leave voids in his perception and cause a state of confusion. It is the state of confusion that determines difficulties with the perception of information, disorganization, clumsiness, disorientation in space, attention deficit, hyper- or hypoactivity.
How to treat dyslexia?
According to professionals,it's better not to do anything in relation to a child with dyslexia than to commit illiterate actions. In this case, the child will be able to find his own solution, which will be correct! Therefore, dear parents, take a closer look at your child. Consult with professionals. They can be found now. And it is quite likely that you will have a unique plant growing. Don't ruin it. Otherwise it will be painfully embarrassing in about thirty years, when the grown-up child forgets to thank his parents in his speech on the occasion of the award...
