Dyslexia

What is It?
Dyslexia is a specific learning difficulty related to reading which can affect children and adults. Children with dyslexia are often picked up at school as they lag behind their peers in reading and writing. Approximately 10% of the population are thought to have some degree of dyslexia, with boys being more affected than girls

What Are The Symptoms?
The symptoms are many and varied, but can include:

Skipping words or lines
Reading slowly or hesitantly
Jumping around of words and letters
Dark, light or coloured patches or patterns appearing on the page
Blurring and doubling of letters or words  

What Causes It?
It is not clear exactly what causes dyslexia and research is still on- going. Recent studies indicate that there are a number of contributory reasons:

1, Inefficiencies in the wiring of the left hemisphere of the brain: this is thought to occur during the early childhood developmental period. It affects processing of information received by the brain.

2, Genetics: Dyslexia tends to run in families. This has led researchers to conclude that some people inherit genes that make certain nerve cells more vulnerable to adverse factors that affect the development of the cells.
Dyslexia is not an indication of poor intelligence and it affects people of all racial and social backgrounds.

How Is It Diagnosed?
Dyslexia Assessments are conducted by trained Educational Psychologists. They will run a series of Psychometric Tests that measure various attributes such as reading and spelling; memory; spatial and verbal skills. The results are compared against normal aged matched ones. Dyslexia is said to be present when there is a severe shortfall in the expected scores.

Visual Problems & Dyslexia
Dyslexia is often accompanied by eye problems which can be a contributory factor in reading difficulties.
There are two particular visual problems that seem to occur more often in dyslexics than in non dyslexics:
1. Difficulty maintaining focus at near tasks
2. Poor co-ordination of the eyes
Because of this, it is important that a thorough eye examination is done prior to any other tests. The eye examination will include checks for:

Latent Hyperopia (long sightedness): drops may need to be used to temporarily prevent the focusing muscles from working. The drops take about 30 minutes to act but will take several hours to wear off. They enable the detection of any latent hyperopia.

Accommodative Insufficiency: Accommodation is the ability to change focus to see close objects clearly.  Poor or unstable accommodation will lead to near vision fatigue and blur, so measurement of accommodation is important when there are problems with close work.

Binocular Co-Ordination: If the two eyes do not co-ordinate well it can lead to eyestrain. Co-ordination problems are fairly common, but are frequently missed. Measurement of the severity and type of instability is undertaken and a treatment plan is formulated to correct or manage it. Most binocular co-ordination problems respond well to a combination of eye exercises and/or spectacles.

The correction of any underlying visual problems can often dramatically reduce symptoms in many individuals who are struggling with reading and writing. However those who are still having difficulties are recommended to have a Coloured Overlay Assesment.

Colour Therapy for Dyslexia
The use of colour to help with specific learning difficulties is backed up by scientific research. Professor Arnold Wilkins’ research showed that approximately 20% of children who suffer from visual stress are helped by placing coloured sheets of plastic film over the reading material. Full details of the study can be found at: http://www.essex.ac.uk/psychology/overlays/in%20schools%20OC4.htm
Helen Irlen’s research in the 1980’s, led to her identifying a condition and naming it Meares-lrlen Syndrome. She describes it as a syndrome in which reading is hampered by distortions of print. The distortions are minimised when the text has a particular colour. The required colour is different for each individual. Her work with adult students showed that some of them read with greater ease when they covered a page of print with a Coloured Overlay. She went on to develop a patented treatment method consisting of specially formulated overlays and lenses.

Coloured Overlay Screening:
This identifies those children and adults who are helped by the use of coloured filters. It involves measuring the speed at which a child reads without any filters and comparing that ‘rate of reading’ with the rate when different coloured filters are put in place.
Some children show a distinct improvement, while for others there is no difference. The colour of any filters that do help will vary from individual to individual.
If the screening shows a statistically significant improvement in reading with a coloured filter an Overlay is issued to use at school and at home.

Some of our Optometrists are trained to perform coloured overlay screening. Please contact us to arrange an appointment with one of these Opticians