
Why ‘resilient dyslexics’ have good reading comprehension - laurex
https://www.israel21c.org/why-resilient-dyslexics-have-good-reading-comprehension/
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Jaruzel
I'm not sure what I've got. I can read _very well_ , I can express myself
through speech and the typed word well also.

What I can't do, is write with my hands. I've never been able to (I'm in my
40's now). It's like I don't have fine motor control over my fingers to form
letters, even though I can build and make tiny things with my hands and
fingers. I have to grip the pen or pencil with a vice-like grip just to be
able to move it in small movements.

Additionally, letters get written in the wrong order or back to front. The
frequency of this happening is every other word or so. Even short words like
'and' or 'to' can get screwed up.

To combat the problem I switched to all-caps in my handwriting during
secondary (high) school. To this day I avoid writing anything by hand if I can
help it. I've never been able to actually pin down whats wrong with me, so the
best I settle on, 'is some kind of dyslexia'.

I'm also left handed, but I'm not sure that's a factor.

EDIT: Thanks guys! It's definitely 'dyslexic dysgraphia' as per the Wikipedia
article. Like RobertRoberts said in a comment below, _this_ is why I frequent
HN more than any other forum. You won't believe how much better I suddenly
feel about this.

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RobertRoberts
I can write correctly, but never neatly, no matter how hard I try. I have been
an artist my entire life, and professional artist for a while.

But also, I transpose numbers in memory. I can read a number, a price, and
phone number. And minutes later, I have to try really hard to recall the
numbers in the correct order. A day later and I am totally convinced of my
memory, but the numbers are not in the right order. Most often it's a pair.

In college I learned to memorize an entire deck of cards (not in order
though), and I could have a friend take out a few cards. I could then look at
the remaining cards in the deck, only once each, and tell my friend which
cards he had taken out. (this is all technique and training, no memory wizard
here)

But still can't keep numbers straight.

Edit: At the bottom of the dysgraphia page some commenters linked to, there's
other related issues. The one I found was dyscalculia [0], I had NO idea this
was a thing!! Ha. This explains my entire childhood. Thanks HN for seemingly
random information changing my life.

I can measure something like 10 times, and still cut the wrong length of
board. I have to work really, really hard to cut and measure things correctly.
I couldn't remember how the friggin denominator worked, still. I have kids and
I had a hard time teaching them fractions. Yet I have thousands of lines of
code clearly in my head right now...

My wife can tell me the price of an item with the sales percent automatically,
and tally up a bill with the tip in an instant, (and she hates math and was
never good at it!) and I would have to get out pencil/paper or concentrate
incredibly hard, and still likely be off.

What a revelation. Thanks guys for this discussion.

Edit: I don't think I have dysgraphia, (nothing severe like some of the
comments here) but I also write in all caps because of "general" writing
problems, I wonder if there's a mix of issues that are related.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyscalculia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyscalculia)

~~~
gnicholas
I work in assistive technology and was recently talking with the head of
accessibility at Intuit.

He is looking for (paid) volunteers who have dyscalculia to help them with
product design decisions. If you email me (my username at gmail) I can put you
in touch.

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RobertRoberts
I emailed you, let me know if you don't get it. (copy/paste error?) Thanks for
the consideration.

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cryoshon
these results aren't very surprising but i guess it's good that they did a
study.

the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is essential for executive functions like
working memory, as the article notes. this means that if you have a strong
DLPFC, you can more easily orient your attention towards a goal, check your
progress, maintain your effort, and monitor yourself in the meantime.

so basically if you are monitoring your own cognition efficiently while doing
the task, you can catch dyslexic mistakes and correct them in your
comprehension. that's my hypothesis at least. it's very tough to really say
these things with confidence because the DLPFC is implicated in an entire
smattering of learning disabilities and executive functions and so generalized
lower activity/density may have an innumerable quantity of consequences.

~~~
neom
Thoughts:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29412010](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29412010)
/
[http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0118143)

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gnicholas
I wasn't sure how to interpret the study. That is, they describe "resilient
dyslexics" as individuals who have good comprehension in spite of decoding
issues. How do these individuals compare to non-dyslexic readers? Do they have
the same comprehension — but it just takes them longer to get there? Or does
their comprehension still lag non-dyslexic peers?

If they have comparable comprehension but in a longer timeframe, then does
this mean that non-resilient dyslexic readers cannot (in any amount of time)
achieve the typical level of comprehension? This seems at odds with my
understanding of dyslexia, and I work in the field.

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perl4ever
I was just thinking today - I read easily, but alphabetizing is relatively
difficult. I'm trying to alphabetize some things, and I'm repeating the first
few letters in my mind. Words and spellings are correlated in my head, but
when I read I'm not automatically working with the letters; it takes work to
produce them. I also sometimes have a momentary inability to compare letters,
so I have to recall part of the alphabet in sequence to locate myself. Like,
say, I suddenly can't remember whether "I" or "M" comes first until I run
through "IJKLM".

I don't think I am or have been dyslexic, but I have no point of comparison.

