Dyslexia and definitions

Question 1

What is acquired dyslexia?

Answer 1

Sudden loss of reading and/or spelling following brain injury

Question 2

What is developmental dyslexia?

Answer 2

A difficultly learning to read or spell present from birth.

Question 3

What are the 3 types of acquired dyslexia?

Answer 3

Deep (severe), surface (irregular words) and phonological (nonsense words).

Question 4

When did dyslexia appear in human history and what does this show?

Answer 4

When mass education meant that everybody was expected to learn to read and write. The brain doesn’t have a reading area but uses existing areas to allow you to be able to read books. This means that dyslexia is caused by disruption in one or more areas and processes that reading is reliant on.

Question 5

What kind of entity is dyslexia?

Answer 5

A continuum- at any given age there will be people who are highly superior at reading and those who are very poor (dyslexic), but most people will be around normal reading level.

Question 6

What is the problem with defining dyslexia?

Answer 6

Educational, medical and behavioural definitions will classify different people as not/dyslexic, and dyslexia is not a single deficit but a cluster of deficits.

Question 7

What are the main points of the working definition of dyslexia by the British dyslexia association?

Answer 7

A learning difficulty affects skills involved in accurate and fluent work reading and spelling; difficulties in phonological awareness, verbal memory and verbal processing speed; from birth and life-long; regardless of intellect; co-occurring difficulties such as motor co-ordination, mental calculation, concentration and personal organisation; resistant to some teaching; mitigated by other methods; constitutional in origin; other strengths and talents.

Question 8

Frith (1999)

Answer 8

Dyslexia is a neuro-developmental disorder with a biological origin which impacts speech processing (cognition) with a range of clinicala manifestations (behaviour). The impact of cultural factors which can aggravate or improve the condition is also important.

Question 9

What are the key characteristics of dyslexia behaviour?

Answer 9

Reading and spelling fluency and accuracy; phonological awareness; verbal processing speed; verbal short term memory.

Question 10

What is phonological awareness used for in reading and spelling?

Answer 10

Grapheme-phoneme conversion: break down words into their parts representing sounds (graphemes) and convert them into sounds that represent the letters (phonemes). Also blending words together, sequencing, rhyming, pronouncing long words and recognising sounds in words e.g. fat, cat, mat.

Question 11

What are some examples of phonological awareness tests?

Answer 11

Blending: What do these sounds make “pen-sul”.
Elision: Say sunshine without saying “sun”
Sound matching: which words start or end with the same sound.

Question 12

What is poor verbal memory in dyslexia?

Answer 12

Less efficient use of verbal codes for remembering verbal items in short term- doesn’t apply to other forms of memory. Verbal memory helps with decoding new words, sentences and meanings, and affects phonological processing.

Question 13

What are example tests for verbal memory?

Answer 13

Digit span: memory for digits
Non-word repetition:
e.g. Teeg, Nabe, Voesutive.

Question 14

What is verbal processing speed in dyslexia?

Answer 14

Difficulty processing and remembering information seen and heard. This can affect learning and acquisition of literacy skills. Dyslexic people are slower on naming tasks.

Question 15

Neuhaus et al (2001)

Answer 15

Pause times on a letter task are more predictive of reading skills than articulation errors or colour/objects.

Question 16

How is verbal processing speed measured?

Answer 16

Tap fluency/speed and automatic processing of letters/words. This predicts reading skill independently of phonological awareness.

Question 17

Why is measuring key behavioural characteristics useful?

Answer 17

Can measure the behavioural level and infer what is going on in the mind and cognition.

Question 18

What is the medical model of disability?

Answer 18

There is something wrong with a person that needs a cure.

Question 19

What is the social model of disability?

Answer 19

Disability only arises because the environment is disabling e.g. stairs in a wheelchair

Question 20

What is the SEND code of practice (2014)

Answer 20

Codes that are mandated in law for all schools, colleges and early years providers. Brings together services with a stronger focus on family and young people in decision making and greater cooperation between education, health and social care for severe cases. It mandates that schools must not discriminate due to a child’s disability.

Question 21

What is the EHC plan?

Answer 21

A plan for complex needs children which includes all support offered and any personal budgets.

Question 22

Who is responsible for progress and development of child in a SEN programme?

Answer 22

The teachers and not the TAs.

Question 23

What is the difference between SEN and LD?

Answer 23

SEN (special educational needs) is when a learning difficulty makes it harder for a child to learn than most same age children, but LD (learning difficulty) is learning a slower pace even with appropriate extra help.

Question 24

What is the definition of a disability?

Answer 24

Physical or mental impairment with long term (year+) an substantial adverse effect on day to day activities.

Question 25

What are the areas of need for specific learning disabilities (SpLD)?

Answer 25

Communication and interaction; cognition and learning; social mental and emotional health; sensory or physical.

Question 26

When assessing progress, what 4 things show that a child requires help and may have an LD?

Answer 26

Their performance is below peers who started at the same baseline; they have a slower rate of progress than previous years; they fail to close an attainment gap to peers or the attainment gap widens.

Question 27

What are examples of SEN provision plans for children with LDs?

Answer 27

A differentiated curriculum (slower pace); adapted aids (e.g. modelling); catch-up programmes; specific programmes (e.g. phonics); planning for transition between schools and years; different exam arrangements; whole class approaches.

Question 28

*Kuppen & Goswami, 2016

Answer 28

Looked at developmental trajectories of dyslexic vs low IQ poor readers. Found that for phonological awareness, dyslexic develop atypically whereas low IQ just develop more slowly. Low IQ poor readers showed atypical Phonological STM and Rapid Automatised Naming development, but children with dyslexia showed developmental delay. For auditory processing, the developmental trajectories were very similar for the two poor reader groups. However, children with dyslexia demonstrated developmental delay for auditory discrimination of Duration, while the low IQ children showed atypical development on this measure. IQ can be used to define dyslexics.

Question 29

• Alexander-Passe, 2015

Answer 29

Dyslexics are discriminated against for their disability, whether they view it as a disability or not.

Question 30

• Lauchlan & Boyle, 2007

Answer 30

We argue that there needs to be an end to the over-reliance on labels. Labels may serve some limited educational functions and be a supportive resource for parents and children(and perhaps some teachers), but the potential negative impacts are huge: stigmatisation; bullying; reduced opportunities in life; a focus on within-child deficits ; mis-classification; and lowered expectations about what a ‘labelled’child can achieve. Aside from, adoption of generalised intervention programmes for children similarly labelled instead of individualised education plans,there seems little reason for promoting the use of labels in special education. It could also be argued that a sensitive approach to labelling is to provide the child and his or her family with the opportunity to accept or reject the label, prior to a decision being made. Those working in special education need to adopt an ethical frame-work to the application of labelling, one which can be considered valuable, not in terms of whether the labels are accurately applied, but in terms of whether it opens and not closes doors.

Question 31

*Riddick, 2010

Answer 31

Stigmatisation can take place without labelling, and even before labelling. It is suggested that further deconstruction of the labelling process is necessary, and that factors such as whether labels are formal or informal, private or public need to be taken into account.