Dyslexia and Early Intervention #23

Today’s interview is with dyslexia and early intervention specialist Dr Tim Conway. If you’re looking for ways to ensure young children are given the best early intervention, or just to take the most effective approach towards setting up a solid foundation for reading in the future, this interview is for you! You can listen to this episode above, listen to it on iTunes or Stitcher, or read the transcript below. Dr Tim Conway Dr Conway works in the area of neuropsychology, which means understanding how our knowledge, our behaviours and emotions relate to our brain function. He’s done extensive research on dyslexia, since it runs in his family, as well as research on how to use early intervention to successfully help kids, and adults, overcome their learning challenges. You can find out more about Dr Conway’s work and his online tutoring programs by going to The Morris Center or NOW! Programs. Or find him on Facebook at Now! Programs or The Morris Center. Just so you know, this podcast has not been compensated in any way to promote Dr Conway’s programs. Nor can I personally vouch for them, but if dyslexia is of personal or professional interest to you his programs are a resource you may like to investigate. Dr Conway, welcome to the Early Childhood Research podcast. Thank you so much, Liz. It is my pleasure. What is dyslexia? Today we’re talking about dyslexia. And so my first question is, what exactly is dyslexia? Dyslexia really falls under a large category called Specific Learning Disorders. It’s a Specific Learning Disorder There are three types of Specific Learning Disorders. * There’s reading and spelling. * There’s a written expression one, * and there’s mathematics. Clearly dyslexia is the one that falls under the reading and spelling learning disorders. Diagnosis That diagnosis can be given to children, whether their reading problem is: * a reading accuracy problem, which means they misread words, they make mistakes, they start to add, repeat, shift, change     words. * a reading fluency problem where they’re reading too slowly and they don’t catch up with their peers and they’re always far behind in their reading speed * a reading comprehension problem where they’re reading along, but they’re not understanding what they’re reading, * and of course there could be any combination of those three altogether That diagnosis of a specific learning disorder is identical or synonymous with the term dyslexia. Etymology DIS means trouble, LEX means words. Dyslexia means trouble with words, but our most common focus is on the reading problems of it. Misconceptions of dyslexia What are the misconceptions of what dyslexia is? Seeing words backwards Probably the most common ones that the newspapers and cartoonists love to play with, is that they make the children or adults with dyslexia see words backwards. They reversed words, they reversed letters and they used to think this might possibly be one of the causes of what was happening. Kids would look at the word “pot” and they might say “top” or they look at “was” and they’d say “saw”, and we thought, oh, they’re seeing the words backwards. But then what no one really asked back then was, how come they don’t look at “the” and ...