Is there a connection between dyslexia and dyscalculia

Dyslexia and dyscalculia are two separate learning disorders, but they can co-occur in some individuals. Dyscalculia is a math disorder that affects a person’s ability to perform arithmetic operations and understand numerical concepts. It is similar to dyslexia in that it is a specific learning disorder that can have a profound impact on a person’s education and daily life. Some studies have found that dyscalculia is more common in individuals with dyslexia, and vice versa, suggesting that there may be a connection between the two disorders. However, it is important to note that not all people with dyslexia have dyscalculia, and not all people with dyscalculia have dyslexia. Each disorder is a distinct condition that requires its own specific treatment and support.

What is double deficit dyslexia

Double deficit dyslexia, also known as comorbid dyslexia, is a type of dyslexia in which an individual has two distinct types of reading impairment. This may include phonological dyslexia, in which a person has difficulty associating sounds with letters or groups of letters, and surface dyslexia, in which a person has difficulty recognizing familiar words. Double deficit dyslexia can make reading and spelling extremely challenging, as it involves two distinct difficulties that can compound one another. This type of dyslexia is thought to be relatively rare, and may be caused by a combination of genetic and environmental factors.

What is surface dyslexia

Surface dyslexia is a type of dyslexia, a learning disorder that affects a person’s ability to read and spell. It is characterized by difficulty in recognizing familiar words, and may manifest as a tendency to read words by their appearance rather than their meaning. People with surface dyslexia may have difficulty with word decoding, the ability to use letter-sound correspondence to read words. They may rely heavily on context and visual clues, such as the length or shape of a word, to guess at its pronunciation and meaning. This can make reading slow and laborious, and can lead to errors and misunderstandings. Surface dyslexia is thought to be caused by a disruption in the brain’s ability to process visual and linguistic information.

What is phonological dyslexia

Phonological dyslexia is a type of dyslexia, a learning disorder that affects a person’s ability to read and spell. It is characterized by difficulty in associating sounds with letters or groups of letters and using this information to read and spell words. People with phonological dyslexia often have difficulty segmenting words into their individual sounds or phonemes and may struggle with phonemic awareness, the ability to manipulate the sounds in words. This can make it difficult for them to learn the relationship between letters and sounds and to use this knowledge to read and spell words accurately. The disorder is often inherited and is thought to be caused by a disruption in the brain’s ability to process speech sounds.

Are there different types of dyslexia?

Yes, there are different types of dyslexia. Dyslexia is a learning disorder that affects a person’s ability to read, write, and spell. It is the most common learning disorder, and affects people of all ages and backgrounds. Dyslexia can vary in severity, and different people may experience different symptoms. Some common types of dyslexia include phonological dyslexia, surface dyslexia, and double deficit dyslexia. Phonological dyslexia is the most common type and is characterized by difficulty with phonemic awareness, rapid visual-verbal responding, and working memory. Surface dyslexia is characterized by difficulty with word decoding and spelling, while double deficit dyslexia is a combination of phonological and surface dyslexia.

Is the brain of a person with dyslexia unique ?

The brain of a person with dyslexia is not unique in the sense that it is fundamentally different from the brains of people without dyslexia. However, brain imaging studies have shown that people with dyslexia have differences in the way their brain processes language compared to people without dyslexia. These differences are thought to be the underlying cause of the reading and language difficulties experienced by people with dyslexia.

Ghotit Statistics/Analytics

All educational software in the market claim effectivity. All provide promises. Most of them fail to let you, the user, ways to check it. We are the exception, we do it!

Our mission at Ghotit is to help dyslectics and dysgraphics to read and write freely. The new version, Ghotit 10, provides any user with a new tool, a statistical method to measure our effectivity, our usefulness for you, not just for an abstract “average user”.

In the new version, Ghotit 10, we introduced Ghotit Analytics (usage statistics) which allows you to see how effective we are for you. This analytic tool can, for example, track how many words you have checked in a given period and what is the percentage of words that needed correction.

 

From the above graph, we learn that in a very short time the user is checking more and more text, indicating expansion of writing volume.  In the beginning, the frequency of words needing correction is quite small, around 750 words. The figure is rapidly growing to 4000, probably since he or she is using wider vocabulary and/or writing more pieces of text.

With Ghotit Real Writer & Reader 10 you will be able to track all aspects of you writing and reading skills.

 

Dysgraphia Treatments

Dysgraphia is a difficulty in handwriting and in the ability to produce a coherent piece of handwriting. Even though the handwriting of all dysgraphics is impaired, symptoms aren’t necessarily identical. Some perform copying tasks successfully, but their spelling is flawed, other express physical difficulties in writing letters indicated by the investment of exceptional efforts in accomplishing simple writing tasks. Still, other spread their texts in an unordered ways making it chaotic and illegible.

Scientists classified dysgraphia into the following three main types:

  • Motor Dysgraphia
  • Dyslexic Dysgraphia
  • Spatial Dysgraphia

The causes of motor dysgraphia are poor dexterity, deficient motor skills or poor muscle tone. People with motor dysgraphia need very much time and a huge effort to form letters. The writing in this case is illegible or poor at its best, and drawing is difficult. The finger tapping of these people is below normal, and though the spelling is normal, many times the writing is slanted because of holding the pen incorrectly.

In the case of dyslexic dysgraphia, people’s spelling is poor and their spontaneous writing is illegible, but their copied work is pretty good. The normal finger tapping of the people with dyslexic dysgraphia indicates the deficit does not stem from cerebellar damage.

People with spatial dysgraphia have a problem understanding the space. Both their spontaneous work and copied work will be illegible in most cases, and their abilities to write suffer as well. This disability is not fine motor based as the finger tapping sped, and the spelling is normal in people with spatial dysgraphia.

These three analytical types serve as gross description of real life people. Many dysgraphics, though, exhibit mixed symptoms, a bit of motor dysgraphia mixed with a bit of dyslexic dysgraphia, etc.

Each of these pure types deserves a different approach, but since these distinctions in practice are not clear-cut, the outcomes are frequently disappointing.

The treatment of Motor Dysgraphia is a frustrating experience since affected individuals exhibit deficient fine motor skills or muscle issues vulnerabilities. For these people writing is a very difficult task, and it requires lots of time and efforts. For motor dysgraphics, dictation is helpful, and they can be assisted by using the excellent Siri on Mac/iOS, Google dictation on Android as well as fast improving Microsoft dictation available on Windows-10. The text after dictation should be further corrected to fix all confused words, possible homophones and punctuation errors.

Yet another option in certain cases of Motor Dysgraphia is to try Word-Prediction techniques. In general, Word-Prediction is supposed to decrease writing efforts and to make typing a more pleasant experience. However, standard tools fail to provide useful predictions on typing or spelling errors.

Proofreading of the written text, particularly with dual highlighting of the currently read phrase and the word, could make a real difference in the case of Dyslexic Dysgraphia and help to spot and fix the errors. But the best and most proven assistance could be a combination of proofreading with Text Correction.

And last, Spatial Dysgraphia. People with Spatial Dysgraphia, where keeping writing in lines and organizing text on a page are the major issues of handwriting, are normally spelling good and expressing well using computer keyboard. The remaining punctuation issues as well as splitting long phrases to short sentences require fixing.

In conclusion: Consider Ghotit Real Writer & Reader software and Ghotit Apps that provide full writing, reading and text correction support for all types of dysgraphia and dyslexia (see the video on Ghotit Home page).

How to Overcome Dyslexia !!!

Many blogs offer ways “how to overcome dyslexia”.  As a dyslexic, I don’t really believe that overcoming dyslexia is possible, and therefore, I don’t think the question “how to overcome dyslexia”  is an effective way of phrasing this question.

 

Instead, I recommend approaching dyslexia in a more realistic way. Switching from the unrealistic target of the deficiency abolition, curing this learning disability, we should develop compensation tools to ease the implications of dyslexia, leading our way to make the most of the insights and virtues associated with dyslexia.

 

We live in an open, almost borderless age, technology is making huge steps to help us, the dyslexics, providing tools to overcome the problems of writing and reading. The post-modern phrasing tends to be become shorter than ever, twitting instead of expanding, letting us, the dyslectics find our equitable integration in human interaction.

 

Today’s world is friendlier than ever, widely accepting and integrating people with dyslexia.

 

This is my feeling, and what about your, what do you think?

Dyslexia Literacy Boosted by Synergy of Different Technologies

The Ghotit two-step correction process aims to help people with dyslexia who want to increase their typing speed while still producing error-free text.

It’s known that the best text correction for people with dyslexia is done by human proofreading. However, if we adopt this approach, those with dyslexia will never gain their writing independence.

There are three major assistive technologies that enable writing independence:

1. Spelling and grammar checkers
2. Word-prediction software
3. Dictation software (speech to text)

Each one of these technologies has its own pros and cons. Spelling and grammar correction, if designed for people with dyslexia and dysgraphia, i.e. Ghotit Real Writer & Reader, corrects spelling and grammar errors including punctuation and real-word (misused words) errors. This technology achieves the best results as it is the closest to the human corrections process: it analyzes the entire text, “understands it”, and then corrects with knowledge of the entire context.

Unfortunately, for many people their writing problems start with the very typing of the text. Their typing is extremely slow. Spelling and grammar correction technology cannot help with these typing issues. Word-prediction and Dictation technologies were designed in part to overcome this “typing limitation”, and they are very helpful in enabling a user to type text at a quicker pace.

However, even using the best Word-Prediction or Dictation solutions, the texts written or dictated are known to contain the following types of errors:

1. Misused words (real-words spelled correctly but placed out of context);
2. Grammar errors;
3. Lack of appropriate punctuation and punctuation errors.

The reason for this partial success is because Word-Predictors and Dictation software have the knowledge of only what was “just written” or “just said”. They are not aware to the context of the full sentence or the next words of the written or spoken phrase.

Some examples:

By the most advanced products.  -> Buy the most advanced products.
Buy the way, just go forward. -> By the way, just go forward.

There is a whole in the ground. -> There is a hole in the ground.
There is a hole new world behind. -> There is a whole new world behind.

In the above examples, the word prediction and dictation solutions will recommend misused words for the currently written word. The reason is that these technologies do not have visibility to any of the words written following this current word.

 
Ghotit recommended methodology for correcting text for people that have typing challenges

1. Create your text by using your favorite Word-Prediction or Dictation software (you can use Ghotit Quick-Spell Word-Prediction sold as a part of Ghotit Real Writer & Reader 6)
2. Next, correct the text you created by using Ghotit phonetic and context speller and grammar corrector.

Following this two-step process, the user will be able to type quickly while producing text that is free from spelling, misused words, grammar, and punctuation errors.