Possible dyslexia question

[PGTlatte]

Our 7 yo son has amblyopia and convergence insufficiency. He has been in vision therapy for these - 10 weeks with one practice, and now two weeks into therapy at another practice (because the other doctor moved away). His first ten weeks of vision therapy gave him a very dramatic improvement in his ability to read. It helped resolve issues he had with tracking, eye teaming, and double vision. At the end of the ten weeks, before the doctor moved, she retested him and based on those results recommended he continue care under another COVD optometrist.

The new practice used the test results she got, and also tested him on areas that had not been previously tested - vision perception. I am concerned about his scores in these areas. Most areas were very high...and two were extremely low. Visual Form Consistency was 9% and Visual Sequential Memory was 5%. Visual Closure was 25%. All others were high - Visual Discrimination 84%, Visual Memory 84%, Visual Spatial Relations 99%, and Visual Figure Ground 99%.

My understanding is that there is overlap in symptoms of vision problems (that can be improved with vision therapy) and dyslexia (which cannot - so therapy for dyslexia is strategies to work around it, not fix it). When we began vision therapy with the other doctor, he had quite a few areas that improved greatly with vision therapy. He will be in vision therapy for six more months at this practice. At the end of this time, if these two specific very low areas (visual form consistency and visual sequential memory) do not improve with vision therapy, would that indicate dyslexia ?

Thank you....

[JessicaS]

Hello!

I don't know the precise answer to your question but what you are describing is my experience.

I had vision therapy in second grade and went from not reading to advanced reading materials in the space of a year. Those first books I read are still pretty special to me.

I do still have dyslexia. Mine isn't too bad.

[karne]

I wish you had more replies to your question. I can't answer specifically, but I thought I'd say hello as a mom w/ a child w/dyslexia. We didn't/don't do vision therapy, so I'm not much help there.

[A&A]

I just wanted to say that a lot of poor readers are light sensitive (I'd venture to guess that those tests were done under fluorescent lights........which is not something we are evolutionarily equipped to deal with.)

We got my son prescription sunglasses and his reading TOOK OFF!!

[Peony]

Originally Posted by karne

I wish you had more replies to your question. I can't answer specifically, but I thought I'd say hello as a mom w/ a child w/dyslexia. We didn't/don't do vision therapy, so I'm not much help there.

This. We do a form of highly structured therapy for my DD1's severe dyslexia but we never had to do vision therapy. I had her tested multiple times for it since I had vision therapy as a child, but that was not one of her issues.

[LauraLoo]

Originally Posted by laundrycrisis

He will be in vision therapy for six more months at this practice. At the end of this time, if these two specific very low areas (visual form consistency and visual sequential memory) do not improve with vision therapy, would that indicate dyslexia ?

We did vision therapy - and actually what led us there was because I initially suspected dyslexia. However, our dev. optometrist ruled out dyslexia as part of the assessment process because of the letter to sound capability, among other things.

From this website:
http://www.dys-add.com/define.html
Dyslexia is a neurologically-based, often familial, disorder which interferes with the acquisition and processing of language. Varying in degrees of severity, it is manifested by difficulties in receptive and expressive language, including phonological processing, in reading, writing, spelling, handwriting, and sometimes in arithmetic.

Dyslexia is not the result of lack of motivation, sensory impairment, inadequate instructional or environmental opportunities, or other limiting conditions, but may occur together with these conditions.


I think there can definitely be an overlap for dyslexia to exist with vision issues, but vision issues can also be the only problem. Did your COVD optometrist screen for dyslexia?

We did vision therapy for 6 months -- We also saw a huge change initially, and the rest came more slowly, but it was significant. I know of another child who took a year to work through his vision issues with VT. I think you may be surprised in what happens in the next 3 months.

[PGTlatte]

Thank you all.

This is what matches him:

"Dyseidesia Dyslexia Such an affected individuals will have poor sight-word vocabularies and will rely on using time consuming word attack skills (a phonetic approach) to decode many words. As a result, students with this condition will read laboriously. Decoding becomes inaccurate for many phonetically irregular words, log for laugh . Characteristic spelling errors include phonetic equivalents for irregular words, such as rede for ready .
Dyseidetic Dyslexia

Children with the dyseidetic type of dyslexia are able to sound out individual letters phonetically but have trouble identifying patterns of letters in groups. Their spelling tends to be phonetic even when incorrect (laf for laugh). Children in this group have deficits in vision and memory of letters and word shapes, making it difficult for them to develop a sight vocabulary. However, they have the ability to acquire adequate phonetic skills."


http://www.education.com/reference/article/dyslexia/


I am hoping for improvement with vision therapy. I have also talked with his reading tutor and she is going to use different methods with him because he has got phonics down, but struggles with anything that is non-phonetic and also is still decoding very simple and frequent phonetic words, over and over, and not making progress on just recognizing them. He also has reversal issues. Vision therapy has already helped some with those, and I know how to keep working on that.

Also he has had great difficulty with addition facts. He calculates them over and over again, very similar to how he decodes the same words over and over again. He will not do drill with me, but I made him a book of facts and DH has been doing verbal drill with him the last few nights and he seems to be making progress. Maybe it will help him to learn these things in an auditory way for now, since visual sequential memory is a challenge for him.

There is also a game at Critical Thinking Company that may help with visual sequential memory. I am thinking of ordering it.

[LauraLoo]

laundrycrisis -- In all my research, I never came up with Dyseidetic Dyslexia. That's very, very interesting. I can definitely see where your concern might be.

One of my friends had a son that she swears is dyslexic (no official dx,) and he was the one that I mentioned that took a longer time with vision therapy. I can't remember when she said something just clicked with him during VT, but it was much later than ds' initial click.

I'd be very interested in the game from the Critical Thinking Company - what's the name of it?

And, while it might seem odd, you may get some valuable information about a possible learning strategy from this article:

http://www.visualspatial.org/Articles/wholes.pdf

[PGTlatte]

Thank you....I will read the article.

The game is called Memory Challenge. It is $26. What I wonder about is short term vs long term. A game like this will exercise his short-term visual sequential memory, but I don't know if that will help his long-term visual sequential memory, which is what is needed to learn to spell and read sight words.

http://www.criticalthinking.com/getP...ample_page.jsp

[LauraLoo]

I came across this research article yesterday - thought you might be interested in it.
"Learning difficulties may be centered in the eye, not the brain."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0614093133.htm

[karne]

Just wondering if your tutor is using an OG or Wilson type program for remediation? We found Wilson to be effective, at least initially.

[PGTlatte]

Originally Posted by LauraLoo

I came across this research article yesterday - thought you might be interested in it.
"Learning difficulties may be centered in the eye, not the brain."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0614093133.htm

Thank you for the article !

Originally Posted by karne

Just wondering if your tutor is using an OG or Wilson type program for remediation? We found Wilson to be effective, at least initially.

She is using OG methods. Most of her students need a lot of help with phonics - our DS is like the opposite of that, so she is modifiying what she does with him to give him more help with whole words.