World
of Dyslexia
Newsletter
December 2007
Newsletter
December 2007
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World
of Dyslexia Newsletter December 2007 |
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Research
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UK Letting Down Dyslexic Pupils - The UK education system fails to identify whether pupils have dyslexia at a young age, leading to fewer dyslexic entrepreneurs in Britain, research has found. 
Challenging Dyslexia Research - There is disturbingly little discussion and reflection around basic concepts in dyslexia research, says associate professor Per Henning Uppstad at the Center for Reading Research at the University of Stavanger. Uppstad questions the vague and abstract term 'phonology'. The authors conclude that wide areas of dyslexia research are based on a term that means everything and nothing. In dyslexia the concept is used about everything from speech sounds to sound waves coming into our ears. Phonology is also explained as something innate and inherent. Consequently phonology has no precise definition.
Criteria for Evaluating Interventions - By common consent there is a 'gold standard' for evaluating interventions. But this standard is rarely able to be achieved in much research. Nevertheless, there may be good reasons for accepting particular conclusions in cases where this gold standard is not actually reached.
Brain Talk - Proust and the Squid - This is a book about the science of how the brain reads, written by a child-development expert who directs the Center for Reading and Language Research at Tufts University in Boston. It is intelligent and detailed -- casual readers might find it demandingly so. But trust Wolf. Her conversational style, reflective comments and insights from work with children and parents struggling with dyslexia help create a narrative flow and bright tone. Wolf addresses the cultural and educational implications of this breakthrough -- or failure of it, as in cases of reading disorders such as dyslexia.
ADHD Treatments Help Reading Disorders - About 30% of children with ADHD also have some form of reading disorder, such as dyslexia. Recently, a study was done to examine whether or not ADHD treatment helped these children with their reading problems. After taking Strattera for 16 weeks, both groups of patients showed almost 50% improvements in their ADHD symptoms like inattentiveness, hyperactivity and impulsivity. Additionally, children who had a reading disorder jumped two years in reading skills from their level before the study. Interestingly, the children without reading disabilities also improved their reading skills by almost a year and a half. Improvements in reading ability as well as reading comprehension were shown in both groups. Also, advances in spelling ability were recorded for both groups. The ADHD group jumped almost nine months and the group who had a reading disorder along with ADHD jumped almost 10 months.
How Do We Make Sense Of What We See? -M.C. Escher's ambiguous drawings transfix us: Are those black birds flying against a white sky or white birds soaring out of a black sky? Which side is up on those crazy staircases? Lines in Escher's drawings can seem to be part of either of two different shapes. How does our brain decide which of those shapes to "see?" In a study published this month in Nature Neuroscience, researchers at The Johns Hopkins University demonstrate that brains do so by way of a mechanism in a region of the visual cortex called V2. Understanding how this brain function works is more than just interesting: It also could assist researchers in unraveling the causes of — and perhaps identifying treatment for — visual disorders such as dyslexia. 
Going, Going, Gone - 'Toe by Toe' literacy program is ‘wiping out’ a lot of illiteracy and dyslexia, according to its architect. The educational psychologist behind the UK West Dunbartonshire 10-year literacy program has made the dramatic claim that it is “wiping out” a lot of dyslexia, as well as eradicating illiteracy. But the council is taking a more cautious view. Tommy MacKay said that the effectiveness of the literacy program at the early stages meant that learning difficulties were being picked up before the age most children labelled as dyslexic are sent for assessment. 
Nothing Synthetic About Phonics - 'Policy-makers would do well to look at more than one set of reading attainment tests, claims an expert. Reading achievement, it appears, can be just as much in the eye of the beholder as beauty, according to new research into the Clackmannanshire phonics programme. Sue Ellis, an expert in literacy at Strathclyde University, has published a report which highlights variations between the national 5-14 test results for P7 pupils involved in the phonics programme and the psychological test results used to proclaim its success. .