Adult Dyslexia
Adult dyslexia can be difficult to diagnose because there are varying degrees of severity. Some people are exceedingly intelligent and possess perfectly fine vision and speech, but they have trouble reading or writing at times. Others may have a more serious adult learning disability, which prevents them from being able to function in every day life without substantial help. Many people are diagnosed as children, but often the dyslexia signs are so subtle that people make it to adulthood without ever fully understanding the problem. It seems that treatment is just as obscure, with adult learning centers and different teaching methods being the best tactics.
Symptoms of dyslexia in adults include the inability to recognize written words and letters, a low reading ability, problems understanding auditory words, difficulty understanding rapid commands and difficulty remembering a sequence. Often times, adults will encounter reversals of letters (like seeing a “b” as a “d”) or reversals of words (“saw” instead of “was”). Sometimes adults with dyslexia have a hard time recognizing the spaces between words and they have a hard time sounding out unfamiliar words. Rhyming words, syllable counting, remembering words, recalling places, distinguishing different sounds, associating words with the wrong meanings, keeping time and organizing are some of the problems that dyslexic male and female adults may encounter on a regular basis.
To determine if a person has adult dyslexia, doctors usually evaluate family medical history and perform a series of different tests. They may perform vision, hearing and neurological tests to rule out some other possible disorders. Psychological assessments are done to see if depression, ADHD anxiety or other obstacles are inhibiting one’s ability to process information. Educational evaluations can determine the level of reading difficulties. Most recently, doctors use neuroimaging techniques in dyslexia research — notably, the functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and positron emission tomography (PET).
Some people deal with adult dyslexia (and the stigmas associated with it) better than others. Today we largely understand mental illness as a biological problem, yet at one time, before scientific research verified the genetic links, reading problems were seen as a weakness. Sometimes people will make hurtful remarks, act frustrated or discriminate against dyslexic adults because they don’t understand the condition. The dyslexic individual may pretend that nothing is wrong, refuse to seek treatment or find difficulty in the workplace as a result. The best thing a person can do is get treatment, understand that their disorder is not who they are as a person, seek support groups and attend adult learning training to acquire new skills.
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Tags: adult learning disabilities, adult learning disability, adult learning styles, children adults, working adults