MORE NEWS ITEMS <Part 4>

News:

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• Dyslexic rocket inventor plans blast-off - Brian Walker, the self-proclaimed 'Rocket Guy' and media star of central Oregon, plans to strap into a tiny capsule and launch himself 35 miles into the air on his homemade rocket next May. (Florida Today - Sep 9th 01)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• English is Europe's toughest language to learn - Despite being the world's most commonly spoken language (apart from Chinese), English is the most difficult European language to learn to read. Children learning other languages master the basic elements of literacy within a year, but kids from English-speaking families take two-and-a-half years to reach the same point. (New Scientist Sep 4th 01)
  
  
• Computer Game Helps Dyslexics - Psychologists in Finland have developed a computer game to help children with dyslexia. They say it improves reading ability by training a specific part of the brain. (August 20th 01)
  
  
• Voice Recognition Software Helping Dyslexics - You may have heard of programs like Dragon Naturally Speaking, where the computer types what you say. This report shows positive results from their use. The feedback we have received is that the more time you spend at the beginning 'training' the program to learn your own particular voice patterns the better. (July 19th 01)
  
  
• Scout rides to increase dyslexia awareness - Alex Smyth, age 13, in the seventh grade of Tillicum Middle School, is riding a tandem bike 800 miles from Olympia to Sacramento, Calif., to call attention to dyslexia and other learning disabilities. (June 21st 01)
  
  
• Steve Redgrave - Olympic oarsman Sir Steve Redgrave, 39, was last week awarded a Lifetime Achievement in the Laureus World Sportsman of the Year awards. He is the only person ever to have won gold medals at five consecutive games, achieved despite diabetes, colitis and lifelong dyslexia.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Intensive lessons can beat dyslexia
  Standard tuition given to dyslexic children is not intensive enough to improve reading skills significantly, according to research by American scientists.
  The results of a study at Florida State University suggest that children aged between eight and ten with serious dyslexia can achieve spectacular advances in reading ability but only if they follow an individual teaching programme - this is rarely offered in American or British schools.
  Daily specialised lessons, taught on a one-to-one basis for two months, can improve the reading skills to average levels, the US team, led by Joseph Torgesen discovered. Dr Torgesen's team offered intensive reading tuition to 60 dyslexic pupils from special schools selected by their teachers as being particularly poor readers.
  Over eight weeks they were given two 50 minute individual lessons five days a week, in which they were taught techniques for matching word portions to sounds.
  Once the eight weeks were over, the children returned to their special schools but continued to have a 50-minute session with their instructor every week for another two months, to help them to use their new skills.
  Their progress was monitored for two years. At the end of the period children achieved scores in the "average" bracket. (The Times, 18 April 2001)
  
  
  
• Scientists identify dyslexia gene - An international team of researchers say they have discovered a genetic basis for dyslexia - a condition which results in problems with reading and writing. In a report in the British Journal of Medical Genetics, they describe how a family with a large number of dyslexic members provided the vital clues to their discovery. The researchers hope their findings will enable dyslexic children to be diagnosed much earlier, so they can be trained to overcome their condition. (Report from the BBC.)
  
  
  
• Jet pilot technology for dyslexia - report from The BBC, March 20th 01 (UK).
  
  
• Dyslexia Harder on English- and French-speaking Children - A new study finds the complexity of the English language makes dyslexia especially difficult for English-speaking children to overcome (March 01).
  
  
• Immune proteins play role in brain development and re-modeling - news from Harvard Medical School (Feb 01).
  
  
• Brain defect underlies the difficulties of dyslexia - A defect in a single part of the brain may underlie the reading difficulties of dyslexic adults, but intensive training can help them overcome their problems and allow them to read (Feb 16th 01).
  
  
• Dyslexia linked to brain abnormality (13 May 99) - dyslexia is linked to reduced activity in a primitive part of the brain that controls movement, co-ordination and balance, scientists have claimed.
  
  
• Brain shown to grow as dyslexics learn - A novel treatment for dyslexia not only helps children improve their reading skills but also shows that the brain changes as dyslexics learn, according to a study by an interdisciplinary team of University of Washington scientists.
  
  
• Undiagnosed dyslexics more likely to go to prison
  A survey of young prisoners has found that one in two is dyslexic. Future inspections of Scottish prisons will report on efforts to screen inmates and offer help, pledged Clive Fairweather HM Chief Inspector of Prisons.
  An estimated 4-10 per cent of Scots are dyslexic, but a study at Edinburgh University by Jane Kirk, a dyslexia adviser, and Gavin Reid, a senior lecturer, found that in a random sample of 50 young offenders at Polmont Institute, half were affected.
  Their report warns that undiagnosed dyslexics "might very well feel devalued at school and turn to deviant behavior as a way of responding to a sense of low esteem – and as a way of achieving recognition from peers.
  A pattern of maladjusted behavior at school might well lead to more serious forms of deviant behavior and then to imprisonment."
  Mr Fairweather pledged to "mention" how the issue of dyslexia was handled in prison inspection reports in a bid to put the problem more firmly on the agenda. Faced with challenges from suicides and drugs, education was far down the prisons needs list.
  Mr Fairweather said, "and dyslexia is even further down."
  But Mrs Kirk responded "Of all the problems and disadvantages facing offenders, dyslexia is one of the easiest to deal with." (TES Scotland 21 July 2000)
  
  
  
• Tests to stop noting accommodations - a San Francisco court settlement means that the Educational Testing Service will end the practice of 'flagging' undergraduate admission test scores from students with learning disabilities such as dyslexia. The extra time allowed or additional accommodations allowed to dyslexic students have been shown on their College Board exams by an asterisk or similar mark, which will no longer be shown. (Feb 8th 01)
  
  
• A victory in the Oregon courts means that dyslexic youngsters will now be able to use spell-checkers in statewide tests after a long battle fought by parents. (Feb 1st 01)
  
  
• No pills for dyslexia (UK) - BBC News reported that the British government had issued advice to parents to be cautious about the use of 'quick-fix' pills for dyslexia being advertised by an American doctor. The pills are said to contain ingredients similar to travel sickness pills. (Oct 30th 00)
  
  
• There's new evidence that dyslexia is caused by a problem with processing sounds in the brain. Dyslexia sufferers get confused when trying to link rapid-fire consonants like "b" and "d" to specific letters, say scientists at the University of California, San Francisco. In a recent study, the researchers recorded brain-wave responses of adults to a series of two beeps. The dyslexia sufferers showed distinct responses to both tones but only when there was a half-second pause between them. As the gap shortened, delayed response to the first sound obscured the second. The good readers could consistently tell the two apart. Other researchers have found hints of the problem in infants. Psychologists Dennis and Victoria Molfese at Southern Illinois University played a series of taped syllables, like "dee" and "bee," for newborns in the hospital and then recorded their brain-wave responses. Eight years later, when the same children were in third grade, the researchers tested the kids for dyslexia. Preliminary results show that 80 percent of the dyslexia sufferers exhibited a single trait as newborns: on average, they responded to sounds three tenths of a second later than other babies. "Kids should be treated early before years of reading failure in school," says Dennis Molfese. (Thanks to Univ. of Wales, Bangor)
  
  
• Ex-pupil can sue over dyslexia (UK) - A House of Lords decision has ruled that education authorities can be sued for damages over the failure of teachers to provide proper schooling for those with learning difficulties, after a case of a dyslexic girl whose needs were not recognized. (July 2000) Read the whole article
  
  
• In an article about the Magdelen College, Oxford, dyslexia researcher John Stein, the well-known architect Richard Rogers is quoted as saying that 'he won't have anyone who's not dyslexic working in his drawing office' ('Observer' newspaper, 4th May 00). It's good to hear of dyslexic adults' strengths in creative areas being recognized professionally.
• The Oxford Dyslexia Unit - interested in trying to understand more about the neuropsychological problems which commonly affect people with dyslexia, particularly the auditory and visual physiology that may underlie them.
  
  
• Tracking down the roots of dyslexia - researchers led by Sally Shaywitz of Yale University found when they compared functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of the brains of dyslexics with those of non impaired readers. Dyslexia is marked by ``significant differences in brain activation patterns,'' concluded the team.
  
  
• Birth test for dyslexia - a simple test soon after birth could establish whether or not a child will grow up to be dyslexic, a study has found.
  
  
• Dyslexic children's' brains have to work five times harder in order to process language tasks, according to research by Virginia Beringer and Todd Williams from Washington University. In simple rhyming puzzles, the children's brain activity was recorded using a new technique called PEPSI (proton echo-planar stectoscopic imaging), but their level of brain activity was the same when processing musical notes instead of words. Read the whole article
  
  
• Dyslexia linked to nerve damage (22 Apr 99)- dyslexia may be caused by damage to nerve cells in the brain, a scientist has claimed. Dr John Stein, from Oxford University, has found damage in the optic nerves of dyslexic children, and believes other areas of the brain's nervous system may also be affected.
  
  
  
  

1. THE CAUSES OF DYSLEXIA

• Dyslexia - what causes it? John Bradford summarizes the latest research
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• The Dyslexia Homepage - information about the physical causes, and psychological effects, of dyslexia, from the Behavioral Neuroscience department of Macalester College (Professor Wiertelak).
  
  
• Inside Medicine: Dyslexia - new dyslexia research
  
  
• Unscrambling Dyslexia New research shows that different patterns of brain activity may account for the neurological disorder known as dyslexia. Phil Ponce asks the experts to discuss the findings.
  
  
• Images of dyslexia - article by Ruth Levy Guyer about functional magnetic resonance imaging and dyslexia.
  
  
• The Physiological Basis of Perceptual Confusions in Dyslexic Children - article by John Stein - Oxford Dyslexia Unit, UK.
  
  
• LAB at Brown University: URI Honors Colloquium - the role of genetics in dyslexia.

2. EXPERIENCES OF DYSLEXIA

• Finding My Own Solutions Thelma Good writes about techniques which have helped her as an adult dyslexic writer.
  
  
• Success - stories of successful dyslexic adults from the Dyslexia Adults Link.
  

3. DIAGNOSIS

• Where Can I get my Child Tested for Dyslexia? - by Juliet Freud.
  

5. ARTICLES ON DYSLEXIA

• Teaching Expertise - articles, taken from recent issues of Optimus newsletters, will prove invaluable for anyone with a professional or personal interest in dyslexia
  
  
• The OFSTED Report on Dyslexia "Schools should identify dyslexia earlier" - OFSTED Reports on UK schools.
  
  

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