Dyslexia and Its Many Faces

Dyslexia is a well-known disorder that is characterized by difficulty with reading and writing. What is not well-known is that there are different types of dyslexia. Thus, children with a diagnosis of dyslexia or specific reading dysfunction may exhibit very different skills and challenges with regards to reading and writing. Griffin and Walton (Dyslexia Determination Test, 2003) listed the following seven different types.

Types of Dyslexia

1. A dysnemkinetic label means poor memory for motor movements when printing or writing letters and numbers. Letter and number reversals are prominent and, generally, reading deficits are mild.
2. A dysphonetic pattern presents with difficulty matching sounds to letters. This results in difficulty sounding out words and using knowledge of phonics to write words. This is evident in both phonetically regular words such as stop and phonetically irregular words such as cough. A typical spelling error might be solw for slow.
3. A dyseidetic pattern presents with slow reading due to an over reliance on phonics to sound out words. A person cannot visualize the whole word and thus, recognize it by sight. Phonetically regular words (e.g. camp) will be read and spelled much more easily than sight words (e.g. laugh).

Mixes

The remaining four types are mixes, a combination of the above three primary types.

1. This is a mix of dysphonetic and dyseidetic patterns resulting in difficulty recognizing sight word and using phonics to sound out and spell words.
2. This is a mix of dysnemkinetic and dysphonetic patterns. Letter reversals are present and there is an inability to use phonics to sound out or spell words.
3. This is a mix of dysnemkinetic and dyseidetic patterns. The difficulty will be reading and spelling of sight words. Letter and number reversals will also be present.
4. This is a mix of all three primary patterns – dysnemkinetic, dysphonetic, and dyseidetic. Thus, deficits exist in letter and number orientation, matching sounds to letter symbols in order to sound out or spell words, and reading and spelling sight words.

Remediation will be most effective by identifying the type of dyslexia. Then, the teacher will select teaching techniques according to the type of dyslexia present. To learn more about how dyslexia affects learning, check out our blog, Understanding Dyslexia. For additional resources, check out The Dyslexia Resource.