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Dec. 17th, 2022 10:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eve_primeProust and the Squid: The Story and the Science of the Reading Brain, by Maryanne Wolf. Very interesting. The first third is on the development of writing systems (exactly the sort of thing my mom loved to read about). The second third is about learning to read - the author invites us to skim the section on neuroscience, but I did wade through it. The final third is insights from her own career as an expert in dyslexia.
As it turns out, there are two main pathways to dyslexia. One is having a difficult time understanding words as made up of specific sounds that recur in other words. The other is having a time delay between seeing letters (and colors, etc.) and being able to name them. It turns out that at least the time precision part is normally governed by the left side of the brain, whereas dyslexics end up reading with the right side of the brain, possibly because they're already more gifted in using the right side, or else their brain just happens to read that way, strengthening the right side and enhancing its other gifts. With different languages, there are different prevalent patterns in dyslexia - in English, many have the first problem, many have the second, quite a few (maybe it was the majority?) have both, but about 10% have neither.
As it turns out, there are two main pathways to dyslexia. One is having a difficult time understanding words as made up of specific sounds that recur in other words. The other is having a time delay between seeing letters (and colors, etc.) and being able to name them. It turns out that at least the time precision part is normally governed by the left side of the brain, whereas dyslexics end up reading with the right side of the brain, possibly because they're already more gifted in using the right side, or else their brain just happens to read that way, strengthening the right side and enhancing its other gifts. With different languages, there are different prevalent patterns in dyslexia - in English, many have the first problem, many have the second, quite a few (maybe it was the majority?) have both, but about 10% have neither.