Learning to Adapt with Dyslexia
Dyslexia is the most common neurodevelopmental disorder under the category of ‘Specific Learning Disability”, which also includes dysgraphia and dyscalculia. Dyslexia is referred to as a ‘decoding difficulty'(1) whereby people find it difficult to connect the letters or letter combinations to their pronunciation, making reading, writing and spelling slower and more effortful. Roughly 10% of Australians have some degree of dyslexia(2), including myself who only made this realisation a year into my Bachelor's degree.
Realising you have Dyslexia as an Adult
It was by chance, during one of my psychology classes on the topic of language, that I first considered I might have dyslexia. Previously I had believed, like many people, that those with dyslexia saw letters backward or jumbled up on the page - a myth disproved by Professor Vellutino back in 1973(3). I have always found reading and spelling hard, but I had assumed everyone else did too, they were just more motivated or intelligent than me. Little did I know that I was the one putting in the most effort, finding ways to compensate for my brain's aversion to written language.
To understand dyslexia we have to look a little closer at how our brain operates. Our brains have developed specific areas to do things like object recognition and speaking because these skills have been used by our ancestors for tens of thousands of years, spoken language was developed around 50-100 thousand years ago. From an evolutionary perspective, written language is still relatively new, developed roughly 5000 years ago, and so our brain doesn't have a dedicated area for written language processing. If you break it down, reading is a complex skill- you have to recognise different ‘symbols’ (letters) some of which look very similar, decode the symbol-sound relationship, recognise that different pairings of letters make different sounds, and then attribute combinations of letters to things in our world. To read fluently requires the integration of several brain regions like the temporal lobe (processing auditory information and memory encoding), Broca’s area (language comprehension) and occipital lobe (visual perception). These areas are connected through white-matter tracts and for people with dyslexia these tracts “ may be too narrow, crowded, or bumpy for normal reading and comprehension to occur. Even in fluent readers, subtle white-matter differences may affect reading ability.”(4) (Dr. Nadine Gaab, Harvard Neuropsychologist). To accommodate for our mishmash connections, we with dyslexia use a lot more of our brain, just less effectively. A brain imaging study showed that dyslexic children use 4.6 times more brain area than non-dyslexic children when reading(5)— no wonder we are exhausted all the time.
Realising I had dyslexia brought up a lot of emotions, not all positive. There was of course the relief, my struggles were valid, explainable and not a result of laziness or unintelligence—there is no link between IQ and dyslexia(6). However, as with many late diagnoses of neurodevelopmental disorders, there was also a sadness. This sadness is most evident when I look back at my younger self who struggled to keep up during school, would get sick with anxiety if they had to read aloud, got teased for weird spelling and lacked confidence in their work.
Finding a Way
Despite the undiagnosed dyslexia, I did quite well during my final year of high school, topping my classes in writing heavy subjects like History and English. My academic success was probably the biggest reason why my dyslexia went undetected, no one saw the hours spent in digital thesauruses, the endless googling or the utter shame when even spell-check didn’t know what I was talking about. In hindsight, however, this experience did teach me how to find resourceful and creative solutions to my problems. After spending the majority of my life unaware I was processing written language differently from my peers, I had unknowingly adapted how I approached reading, writing and spelling in my everyday life.I thought I might share some of the resources and tactics I have used along the way.
There are loads of online thesauruses out there which all work well, but I do have a preference for WordHippo (this could be influenced by the fact that “WordHippo” is significantly easier to spell than “thesaurus”). I found that it gave me a larger variety of synonyms and had additional features like sentences and word forms to help me get that perfect word! Plus its simple layout is easy to use.
Grammarly: Grammarly is pretty well known, I have only ever had the free version which works well as an additional spell checker. I have found that it usually guesses what I am trying to say better than the inbuilt spell-checking in Word or email. It works across multiple platforms which was especially useful when I was using Notion, however, this does mean you are forever being followed by a little judgy red dot.
I stumbled across this website in university and since then have used it to edit my work (including this blog post!). Re-reading your work aloud is essential as, even with multiple spell checkers, I would still get words mixed up like “load” and “loud” (yes that did just happen at the beginning of this sentence). Unfortunately, I can’t trust my dyslexic brain to read my own work without gaslighting me into thinking it's perfect, so a computer is the next best thing. The reason I like this reader is because I find the loading time is fast when I copy and paste my work in. Bonus, if you have Grammarly it will work on this too!
This is another text-to-speech program. I find it runs slower than TTSReader, however, I did find it useful for reading PDFs because of the additional phone app. As a psychology major, we had a lot of required readings that used complex sciencey jargon. Reading comprehension was a struggle at the best of times but these papers would leave me exhausted. My workaround was downloading a PDF version of the paper into the Natural Reader library and then listening to it on the train while I followed along with my printed copy (which was later switched out for an iPad to save paper). I found my verbal comprehension far exceeded my written comprehension, being able to see and hear the words simultaneously cemented my understanding.
and : I am overall pretty confident with my dyslexia and these days can laugh off any spelling mistakes, but the one thing that still makes me super uncomfortable is name pronunciation. When I found myself in jobs that required me to call and greet people, this became an enormous stressor, leading me to find name pronunciation websites. I would always quickly check the pronunciation of a person’s name before I had to call or meet with them, helping to alleviate that initial stress.
Use your Smartphone: All the above adaptations are thanks to technology and your phone is no different. I especially like using the speech-to-text features available in SMS, Chrome or Siri. Can’t work out how to spell a word? Just say the word into your phone (I use the search bar in Google Chrome) and 9/10 times it will get the word correct!
Being Honest about your Dyslexia
I can completely understand the shame we with dyslexia carry but it impacts large parts of our lives and having open conversations with our work, university, friends and peers can prove enormously beneficial.
Those close to me are very aware of my limitations and witnessing them accommodate this makes me feel pretty special. My partner is very used to being my walking spell-checker and will read things like emails or letters to me. Sometimes when I need a more human voice she will also read my assignments aloud. At university, I was able to get adjustments with my exams whereby I was given additional time to account for my slower reading and writing. The work I have done so far hasn’t really required me to disclose that I have dyslexia but I have made my workplace more dyslexic-friendly by installing Grammarly to work computers and keeping headphones at work in case I need something on the computer read out loud. It is important to note that the Disability Discrimination Act protects those with dyslexia from unlawful discrimination based on their condition.
I very rarely come across a person who hasn’t been understanding when I explain I have dyslexia and ask for additional help with spelling or reading but these days when I do I don’t let it impact my sense of self. I have spent years building back my confidence and I refuse to let one insignificant person affect it and you shouldn’t either. I have found over the years that being confident and matter of fact, when I’m in a situation where I need to explain my dyslexia, stops people from making additional assumptions about things like my intelligence; having a sense of humour about it also goes a long way.
References:
1. Snowling MJ, Hulme C. Annual research review: the nature and classification of reading disorders--a commentary on proposals for DSM-5. J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 2012 May;53(5):593-607.
2. Australian Federation of Disability Organisations. < >
3. Vellutino, Frank R., et al. "Immediate visual recall in poor and normal readers as a function of orthographic-linguistic familiarity." Cortex 9.4 (1973): 370-386.
4. Reading and the Brain. Harvard Medical School. 2016. < >
5. Richards TL, Dager SR, Corina D, et al. Dyslexic children have abnormal brain lactate response to reading-related language tasks. AJNR Am J Neuroradiol. 1999;20(8):1393-1398.
6. Tanaka, Hiroko et al. “The brain basis of the phonological deficit in dyslexia is independent of IQ.” Psychological science vol. 22,11 (2011): 1442-51.
2. Australian Federation of Disability Organisations. < >
3. Vellutino, Frank R., et al. "Immediate visual recall in poor and normal readers as a function of orthographic-linguistic familiarity." Cortex 9.4 (1973): 370-386.
4. Reading and the Brain. Harvard Medical School. 2016. < >
5. Richards TL, Dager SR, Corina D, et al. Dyslexic children have abnormal brain lactate response to reading-related language tasks. AJNR Am J Neuroradiol. 1999;20(8):1393-1398.
6. Tanaka, Hiroko et al. “The brain basis of the phonological deficit in dyslexia is independent of IQ.” Psychological science vol. 22,11 (2011): 1442-51.
