Different Types Of Dyslexia: Characteristics

Dyslexia is a disorder that affects the ability to read and understand the

. This disorder involves difficulty in reciting the alphabet, naming letters, and analyzing and classifying sounds . Due to dyslexia there are frequent omissions, substitutions, distortions, inversions or additions, slowness, hesitation and visual monitoring problems and comprehension deficits. However, not all of these aspects are presented in the same way, so we can talk about different types of dyslexia.

To understand the different types of dyslexia, it is necessary to understand that reading is a two-way process . This means that our brain has two ways of reading words, one visual and another phonological. The first, the visual path, consists in reading the words as a whole, resorting to memory through its superficial aspects; this can only be done with familiar words, as unfamiliar words are not kept in memory. The phonological path, then, allows reading through a grapheme-phoneme transformation one to one, very useful for reading unknown words.

Now, if any of these pathways are damaged, dyslexia will occur . In this article we will talk about the different types of dyslexia that arise based on the different reading capabilities

. In particular we will deal with superficial dyslexia, phonological dyslexia and profound dyslexia.

People with superficial dyslexia have a selective inability when they read words with irregular pronunciation . It is a form of dyslexia that does not appear in all languages, because not all languages ​​have words with irregular pronunciation. For example, Italian does not have any, but English does. One manifestation of this dyslexia is found in the difficulty of pronouncing “steak” (irregular) compared to “speak” (regular).

Superficial dyslexia responds to impairment of the visual path or direct access to words . Such people, therefore, are able to perfectly read regular words through a one-to-one translation of grapheme e

, but with irregular words this strategy is not useful. They also have no problem reading non-existent words or pseudowords, and this is further proof of the damage to the direct access path.

Another key aspect of this type of dyslexia is that the semantic capacity is not seen impaired . Even if the person cannot read the word correctly, they can still understand it if it is pronounced aloud and correctly. So the damage is limited only to the reading ability of the subject.

People with phonological dyslexia have a selective disorder of the ability to read unknown words or pseudowords. Instead, they keep their ability to read familiar words intact . For example, they would have difficulty reading the word “amorar”, but could easily read the word ”

“.

This shows us that the damaged path concerns the phonological path . Therefore, people suffering from phonological dyslexia are unable to translate words from grapheme to phoneme, so they will have difficulty reading unknown or non-existent words that are unfamiliar to them. On the other hand, since the direct path is intact, it will not be a problem to read the familiar or familiar words.

In these subjects there is also an additional difficulty in reading

(the, the, a, before…). This is probably due to the fact that they are very abstract and lack content. But the survey results are confusing and we need to be cautious about phonological dyslexia, as there may be more damage than directly affecting the phonological path.

At first glance it appears that superficial dyslexia and phonology exhaust the possibilities of the consequences of an injury in a dual path model. However, there is still another, somewhat surprising type of dyslexia: it is profound dyslexia. Despite its resemblance to phonological dyslexia, it has a distinctive feature – semantic paralxias .

Semantic paralysis occurs when the subject, instead of reading the written word, produces a different word, but with a meaning related to the original . For example, when faced with the written word “daughter”, the patient is likely to pronounce the word “sister”. It is a very interesting phenomenon, which indicates the existence of lesions in determining the semantics of words.

Another key aspect, which shows us the semantic damage, is that the imaginability of the word shows the degree of difficulty of reading. In other words, in concepts for which it is

worse reading performance; on the other hand, with the concepts of easy mental representation, the reading performance will be better. This shows us that there are difficulties in finding the word within the semantic network. And so the more mental data we have about it, the easier it is to locate and read it.

Dyslexia is a complex disorder that provides us with a lot of information about how our ability to relate to language works . Understanding the different types of dyslexia helps us understand the structure and functionality of language. For this reason, it is essential to study and conduct comprehensive research if we are to fully understand the fundamentals of communication and identify the source of possible problems in communication.