Signs of Dyslexia

Parents are often very frustrated and blame their selves for their child's learning problems, but if certain conditions, problems and symptoms exist, the parent or care giver should consider the dyslexia test - an evaluation of the disability. This very important evaluation should only be conducted by the proper qualified professional such as a educational professional psychologist or a neurologist. This dyslexia test includes testing of the reading ability and measures the skills involved with rapid naming. Also sequencing skills for short term memory and non word reading will help to evaluate phonological coding skills. The IQ test can be used to establish and determine learning strengths and weaknesses. Of course other testing should be ran to determine and exclude other causes for the reading and hearing problems that might be the result of physical causes or a more generalize cognitive impairment.

The list below describes some of the shared symptoms that could result from the speech/hearing deficits and dyslexia:

Problems retaining and learning the alphabet and numbers.
Phonological Awareness - Problems generating or identifying rhyming words and/or counting syllables.
Auditory Discrimination -Problems with distinguishing the different sounds in words.
Problems of associating the correct meanings with the individual words.
Word combinations being confused.
Problems of organization skills.
Problems confusing items like left/right and before/after, and so on.
Problems with word retrieval and naming problems.
Phonemic Awareness - Problems hearing and manipulating different sounds in words.
Problems learning the different sounds of letters.
Problems with the concept of and the keeping of time.
The children learn they are speaking incorrectly and could become either shy and withdrawn or go to the other extreme and become a bully due to the inability to understand the social cues in their environments.

With all of the other problems associated with the speech and hearing difficulties, it is very understandable that the dyslexic child will have spelling and reading problems. Reading is learned with a lot of the words being spoken and pronounced out loud so these difficulties are to be expected. Problems learning the sound-letter correspondence will cause the child to misspell words by leaving out vowels, by transposing letters, which means to reverse the letters such as "does for dose". The dyslexics may subtract of even add letters, often repeating letters in the words. Highly phonetic forms such as "shud for should" is also a form of spelling for the dyslexic child. Difficulties with the homophones like the "their and there" may be a problem as well. Most of the dyslexics will have a small written vocabulary even if the spoken vocabulary is very large.

Problems of the motor skills and writing skills are often present with the dyslexic child as well. Slower then normal writing speeds can and will be accompanied with poor handwriting. Inappropriate words may be present with irregular formed letters. Some studies show results of gross motor problems with the dyslexic child, this can include the motor skills disorder that is indicated by poor coordination and clumsiness. Remember the dyslexia test - an evaluation of the disability is a good place to start with the determination of the disability and the treatment of dyslexia.