Overcoming Dyslexic Reading Difficulties Through Visual Reading 4.10.25
There has been a long history of argument over what causes dyslexia and what the main features of dyslexia are compared to other forms of neurodivergence and non-dyslexic readers. I do not intend to rehash these arguments here. However, a great number of academics have argued that you can tell it’s dyslexia if the reader fails to respond adequately to instruction. For example, Snowling (2013) reports:
“An alternative approach to screening and assessment pioneered in the US is ‘response to intervention….. This method, as its name suggests, involves monitoring the progress of a group of children through a programme of intervention rather than undertaking a static assessment of their current skills. Children with the most need are those who fail to respond to effective teaching, and they are readily identified using this approach. Indeed, such a strategy was advocated by the Rose (2009) Review on identification and teaching of dyslexia and other literacy difficulties.”
More recently, there has been a greater focus on the strengths of dyslexia as a counterweight to the evident difficulties we experience. In this context, ‘dyslexic thinking’ has been posited as a strength. Dyslexic thinking is a holistic and usually visual approach to understanding our experiences. I argue that this is a feature that impacts both reading difficulties and what needs to be done to overcome them.
When I looked at the images produced by visual tracking software, two things became obvious. Almost none of the readers had good visual tracking, but neurodivergent readers often had spectacularly inaccurate saccades. My understanding, from my own dyslexic experience, is that when we see a problem we need to see the big picture, to make sense of all the details by how those fit into the big picture. Physiologically, we scan problems to avoid getting bogged down in meaningless detail. Another word for those eye movements is saccades, albeit unusually large ones. Large random saccades are, of course, disastrous for reading.
Consequently, while gaining control of saccades is important for all readers (and poor control being one of the reasons most people are poor readers), but it is essential for neurodivergent readers. Thankfully, the Structured Saccade Overlays make this a simple process.
Visual Reading Online supports dyslexic thinking (applying metacognitive reading strategies) and make the reading process far more visual than verbal. Meanwhile, the metacognitive reading strategies promote a holistic approach to reading which feels more natural to us than sequential approaches.
The critical question is, does it make a difference?
The initial reading speed of the dyslexics who have completed Visual Reading is 133 words per minute (wpm). This compares with a postgraduate mean reading speed of 190 wpm. After just one week, the mean reading speed (while comprehension improves) is 249 wpm. In fact we can see the week by week progress in the Chart below.
(Postgraduate mean reading speed:190 wpm) | Dyslexic Visual Readers reading speed in wpm |
At beginning of course | 133 |
After 1 week | 249 |
After 2 weeks | 290 |
After 3 weeks | 337 |
After 4 weeks | 388 |
After 5 weeks | 448 |
After just 5 weeks, dyslexic readers are reading 3.4 times faster than they started (with good, to excellent, comprehension and recall) and 2.4 times faster than the average postgraduate. In other words, indisputably, in just 5 weeks, with minimal intervention (less than 2 hours coaching), dyslexic readers are vastly superior in their reading skills than their postgraduate peers. This is not a ‘remediation’ but a demonstration of what building on our strengths can do.
References:
Snowling, M. (2013) Early identification and interventions for dyslexia: a contemporary view, J Res Spec Educ Needs, Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2015 Aug 17.
Published in final edited form as: J Res Spec Educ Needs. 2013 Jan 1;13(1):7–14. doi: 10.1111/j.1471-3802.2012.01262.x
