WEBVTT - How Dyslexia Works 0:00:01.120 --> 0:00:04.560 Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works 0:00:04.600 --> 0:00:13.480 dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. 0:00:13.560 --> 0:00:16.759 There's Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there, and there's Jerry 0:00:16.840 --> 0:00:20.480 And this is Stuff you Should Know about dyslexia. How 0:00:20.520 --> 0:00:23.320 are you doing good? Good? How are you? I'm doing 0:00:23.320 --> 0:00:28.400 pretty good man, just you know, hanging out over here. Yeah, 0:00:28.480 --> 0:00:31.920 ready to wrap. I thought this is pretty cool. I'm 0:00:31.960 --> 0:00:35.760 surprised that we had not discussed this yet because it's 0:00:35.840 --> 0:00:40.040 right upart alley totally very stuff you should know type show. Um, 0:00:40.080 --> 0:00:44.280 and I think it's an interesting uh you know, I 0:00:44.280 --> 0:00:47.959 guess it's labeled a learning disorder most most definitely it's 0:00:48.000 --> 0:00:52.000 a specific learning disorder according to the US government. Yeah. 0:00:52.000 --> 0:00:54.440 I always just have a hard time, what you know, 0:00:54.440 --> 0:00:57.400 knowing whether or not to like almost aid affliction them, like, 0:00:57.640 --> 0:01:00.200 is that an affliction? I don't even know. I think 0:01:00.280 --> 0:01:03.640 it's I think anybody with dyslexia and anybody, any expert 0:01:03.680 --> 0:01:06.200 in the field would say it's a learning disability. It's 0:01:06.240 --> 0:01:11.480 a specific learning disability that um that we're not entirely 0:01:11.560 --> 0:01:15.440 certain what causes it, but most people would tell you 0:01:15.480 --> 0:01:20.120 that typically it's considered a neurobiological condition. They think that 0:01:20.160 --> 0:01:24.240 there's a basis to the brain that leads to this 0:01:24.560 --> 0:01:32.039 situation where otherwise um bright and um yep and intelligent 0:01:32.120 --> 0:01:37.400 students have what they call unexpected difficulty learning to read 0:01:37.800 --> 0:01:41.360 and that it afflicts them their entire life. But there's 0:01:41.720 --> 0:01:45.800 a lot of questions that's surround the definition. And one 0:01:45.840 --> 0:01:49.600 of the problems with dyslexia research is that that's that's 0:01:49.800 --> 0:01:53.440 that's not the official definition. There's about as many definitions 0:01:53.440 --> 0:01:56.600 as there are studies of dyslexia. Yeah, this one from 0:01:56.680 --> 0:01:59.800 Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity made sense to me 0:01:59.840 --> 0:02:02.480 that as far as just sort of a simple way 0:02:02.520 --> 0:02:05.920 to say it, uh, an unexpected difficulty in reading in 0:02:05.960 --> 0:02:08.200 an individual who has the intelligence to be a much 0:02:08.200 --> 0:02:12.440 better reader. So in other words, like this isn't adding up. 0:02:12.600 --> 0:02:16.160 All the tools are there, um, and you should be 0:02:16.160 --> 0:02:18.960 a better reader than you are, but you're not. So 0:02:19.200 --> 0:02:24.560 why what gives? Yeah, So there's um, there's there's a 0:02:24.600 --> 0:02:27.280 lot too that though, right, Like, there's this idea that 0:02:29.040 --> 0:02:31.280 if if we know enough about the brain and we 0:02:31.360 --> 0:02:33.320 have things like m r S and stuff like that, 0:02:33.800 --> 0:02:35.960 so you would think that by now, since maybe the 0:02:36.040 --> 0:02:39.160 nineties or whatever, we would have positively identified what it is. 0:02:39.360 --> 0:02:42.440 But there's a confounding problem that they've run into and 0:02:42.560 --> 0:02:46.640 dyslexic read dyslexia research and we'll get into it more later, 0:02:47.120 --> 0:02:50.680 but they haven't figured out if what they're looking at 0:02:50.919 --> 0:02:57.639 is the changes that would come from not reading as much, UM, 0:02:57.800 --> 0:03:02.799 or if the brain structure there's is actually dyslexia. Right, 0:03:03.080 --> 0:03:06.000 So they're having trouble with it. I'll explain it better later. No, 0:03:06.160 --> 0:03:07.760 but I know what you mean. Well, good as long 0:03:07.800 --> 0:03:09.880 as you do. But it also counts if like the 0:03:09.960 --> 0:03:14.760 million or so people listening to this also do uh, hey, everybody, 0:03:14.840 --> 0:03:19.880 dyslexia is very um studying it and understanding it and 0:03:20.160 --> 0:03:24.320 UM learning how to teach children with dyslexia is very 0:03:24.320 --> 0:03:28.880 important because up until semi recently, I'm just gonna go 0:03:28.919 --> 0:03:32.360 say recently, if you were had dyslexia and you are 0:03:32.360 --> 0:03:35.720 a student, UM, you might have been called stupid or 0:03:35.840 --> 0:03:38.480 dumb and you might have been Yeah, you might have 0:03:38.520 --> 0:03:42.680 been put at a separate table and said, well you 0:03:42.800 --> 0:03:46.760 go here because we you can't keep up. UM this 0:03:46.800 --> 0:03:49.160 one guy, man, this one really hit home or not 0:03:49.280 --> 0:03:52.040 hit home, but UM hit you in the bread basket 0:03:52.080 --> 0:03:55.960 in the bread basket, which is like home um pull it. 0:03:56.400 --> 0:04:00.360 Pulletzer Prize winner Philip Schultz was diagnosed later in life, 0:04:00.400 --> 0:04:03.000 and he said, growing up in the nineteen fifties, he 0:04:03.000 --> 0:04:05.240 he said, basically he was placed in what he called 0:04:05.280 --> 0:04:08.920 the dummy class. Three children in his class were separated, 0:04:09.280 --> 0:04:11.360 put at a table in the corner. The teacher didn't 0:04:11.360 --> 0:04:14.440 talk to them much. And essentially one day, like the 0:04:14.440 --> 0:04:18.280 principle was coming around and she said, here these books, 0:04:18.680 --> 0:04:22.479 pretend to read them, right, the principles coming Yeah. Man, 0:04:22.720 --> 0:04:25.839 that is just tough. But there's something really significant about 0:04:25.880 --> 0:04:29.599 that that that was a column written by a guy 0:04:29.680 --> 0:04:33.440 named Philip Schultz who was a Pulitz Surprise winner. So 0:04:33.720 --> 0:04:36.440 that really kind of reveals the fact that what they 0:04:36.560 --> 0:04:39.800 figured out through decades and decades of research is that 0:04:40.040 --> 0:04:45.159 people with dyslexia aren't stupid. They specifically have trouble learning 0:04:45.200 --> 0:04:49.480 to read and spell and write, and more and more 0:04:49.520 --> 0:04:51.760 research has kind of gotten to the root of their 0:04:51.800 --> 0:04:55.760 the problems with dyslexia. But we have found that with 0:04:56.480 --> 0:05:01.520 patients and practice, people with dyslexia can learn to read. 0:05:01.720 --> 0:05:05.040 You have dyslexia your entire life, there's no cure for it, 0:05:05.560 --> 0:05:08.120 but you can learn to read, and you can learn 0:05:08.200 --> 0:05:12.200 to navigate and cope with dyslexia as a child and 0:05:12.360 --> 0:05:15.280 into adulthood. Yeah, And I don't want to certainly don't 0:05:15.279 --> 0:05:17.359 want to sound like I'm bagging on teachers, because you know, 0:05:17.400 --> 0:05:20.960 both of my parents were teachers, and uh, even back 0:05:20.960 --> 0:05:24.799 in the day when you know, let me just say this, Uh, 0:05:25.279 --> 0:05:28.120 teachers back then didn't have the same tools that they 0:05:28.120 --> 0:05:32.040 have today, and they didn't have an understanding of dyslexia. 0:05:32.160 --> 0:05:35.040 So if they had students that weren't keeping up and 0:05:35.680 --> 0:05:38.760 uh would force the class to maybe lag behind. They 0:05:38.880 --> 0:05:42.240 may not have made the best decisions, but they didn't 0:05:42.279 --> 0:05:45.040 have all the tools at their disposal to make better decisions. Right. 0:05:45.120 --> 0:05:47.680 The presence of a kid with dyslexia in a class 0:05:47.839 --> 0:05:51.279 creates a conundrum. Do you slow the class down to 0:05:51.360 --> 0:05:55.640 that kid's speed and um as far as like reading 0:05:55.680 --> 0:06:01.280 and spelling and writing lessons go um uh, potentially risking 0:06:01.680 --> 0:06:03.680 like slowing down the rest of the class who are 0:06:03.760 --> 0:06:06.640 learning at a normal clip. Or do you take this 0:06:06.680 --> 0:06:09.480 guy with dyslexia, this girl with dyslexia and put them 0:06:09.480 --> 0:06:14.479 in a special needs class that may address their reading 0:06:14.600 --> 0:06:17.240 and writing, but they're going to get so far behind 0:06:17.360 --> 0:06:21.680 their classmates and every other subject that they're normally proficient at. 0:06:22.279 --> 0:06:24.440 It's a problem, and they had no idea how to 0:06:24.680 --> 0:06:27.359 how to grapple with it for almost all of the 0:06:27.360 --> 0:06:31.760 twentieth century and multiple generations of kids with dyslexia suffered 0:06:31.800 --> 0:06:34.680 as a result. Yeah, it's really sad. Um. There are 0:06:34.680 --> 0:06:38.760 a lot of symptoms for dyslexia, key symptoms, uh, and 0:06:38.880 --> 0:06:41.840 these are very important because there is no blood tests, 0:06:41.880 --> 0:06:44.919 there is no there's no even I mean, there are 0:06:44.920 --> 0:06:46.560 a lot of testing they can do, but that there's 0:06:46.560 --> 0:06:50.240 no standardized, specific tests that will really nail it down, right, 0:06:50.279 --> 0:06:53.400 So so keep that in mind. There's no there's no 0:06:53.720 --> 0:06:58.000 official definition of dyslexia, and there's no specific tests to 0:06:59.000 --> 0:07:02.120 suss out dysleke, right, two big problems. Yeah, so you 0:07:02.200 --> 0:07:05.520 gotta look at this collection of symptoms. Um. The first 0:07:05.560 --> 0:07:09.760 obvious one is slow reading and accurate reading. Difficulty sounding 0:07:09.760 --> 0:07:14.000 out words, UM, difficulty pronouncing longer words with multiple syllables, 0:07:14.040 --> 0:07:18.520 which we'll get to that in a bit. UM. Inability 0:07:18.560 --> 0:07:22.600 to read or speak made up nonsense words, which I 0:07:22.600 --> 0:07:26.600 thought was interesting, poor short term memory, for verbal information, 0:07:26.600 --> 0:07:31.120 whether it's written or spoken spoken. Uh, poor spelling, like 0:07:31.360 --> 0:07:34.480 really poor spelling, to where you sometimes can't even tell 0:07:34.480 --> 0:07:36.920 what the words they're trying to spell are, right, not 0:07:36.920 --> 0:07:39.840 not just like you know, like using an F instead 0:07:39.880 --> 0:07:41.920 of a pH or something like that. Yeah, And we 0:07:41.920 --> 0:07:44.320 should also point out too, that is it's very much 0:07:44.360 --> 0:07:46.880 an incorrect notion that if you have dyslexi you just 0:07:46.960 --> 0:07:49.760 transpose letters or spell things backwards. That's what I thought 0:07:49.800 --> 0:07:53.360 for most of my life dyslexia was people they spelled 0:07:53.400 --> 0:07:55.520 things backwards and that was that, and that they also 0:07:55.560 --> 0:07:58.040 read backwards, and that they could train themselves to read 0:08:00.040 --> 0:08:04.040 things backwards. Totally made up. It's not totally made up, 0:08:04.040 --> 0:08:06.920 but it's so such a such a just a one 0:08:07.000 --> 0:08:10.440 component of dyslexia that it might as well just be 0:08:10.480 --> 0:08:14.280 an urban legend. Yeah, totally um. And then what this 0:08:14.320 --> 0:08:17.000 can lead to it's not just like, oh I have 0:08:17.040 --> 0:08:20.960 trouble reading like that. That spills out into all aspects 0:08:20.960 --> 0:08:24.240 of life, whether it's your self esteem, or you might 0:08:24.320 --> 0:08:29.000 have problem with with directions directionally, you might have issue 0:08:29.040 --> 0:08:32.560 with your budgets or money items, or you might not 0:08:32.600 --> 0:08:37.839 can tell time, very well, frustrated, anger, difficulty planning things. 0:08:38.320 --> 0:08:41.679 It's not just limited to reading issues. And then in 0:08:41.720 --> 0:08:45.120 real life you, um, you might read something and have 0:08:46.440 --> 0:08:50.760 very little recollection of what you just read. Um, you 0:08:50.760 --> 0:08:55.400 you will probably have problems giving presentations, finding the right word, 0:08:55.480 --> 0:08:59.360 recalling words, that kind of thing. Um. When you do read, 0:08:59.400 --> 0:09:01.520 and when you learn to read, you will be reading 0:09:01.559 --> 0:09:06.680 slower than anybody else, even reading at your reading level. Um, 0:09:06.800 --> 0:09:09.880 you just do it more slowly. And then as an adult, 0:09:10.000 --> 0:09:12.440 a lot of people are like, oh, good god, I'm 0:09:12.480 --> 0:09:14.200 done with school. Let me just go off and find 0:09:14.240 --> 0:09:17.120 a job that doesn't require any reading or any writing, 0:09:17.679 --> 0:09:20.160 and I will be fine. I will go to restaurants 0:09:20.160 --> 0:09:23.640 in order the same thing at every restaurant, and um, 0:09:23.679 --> 0:09:27.559 if this routine that I've developed to mask my dyslexia 0:09:27.679 --> 0:09:30.079 is ever interrupted, I will flip out and try to 0:09:30.160 --> 0:09:32.680 keep it under control, but I will seem a little 0:09:32.720 --> 0:09:37.600 awkward socially during instances like this. There's ways you can 0:09:37.720 --> 0:09:40.640 carve out a life for yourself. But you don't have to, 0:09:40.760 --> 0:09:44.320 because now we understand dyslexia way more than we did before, 0:09:44.360 --> 0:09:46.640 and we understand the treatment of it too. Yeah, and 0:09:46.679 --> 0:09:48.640 as far as how many people have it it's it's 0:09:48.679 --> 0:09:50.800 tough to get UM because of all these reasons we're 0:09:50.800 --> 0:09:53.840 talking about to have to get a good number that's reliable. 0:09:53.880 --> 0:09:58.040 But anywhere between five and fifteen to seventeen percent, it 0:09:58.120 --> 0:10:01.000 looks like UM would is sort of it's not the 0:10:01.040 --> 0:10:04.080 biggest range in the world. But they don't really know, no, 0:10:04.240 --> 0:10:06.120 they have they have no idea because there's a couple 0:10:06.120 --> 0:10:07.960 of problems. One, there's a lot of people out there 0:10:08.000 --> 0:10:12.040 who don't realize they have dyslexia UM. And then there's 0:10:12.040 --> 0:10:13.800 a lot of people who do know they have dyslexia 0:10:13.800 --> 0:10:16.600 in are either ashamed of it or have just set 0:10:16.679 --> 0:10:18.880 up their life to where they don't have time or 0:10:19.000 --> 0:10:22.960 room to go be diagnosed and then go learn to 0:10:23.080 --> 0:10:26.080 overcome it. There's just like, whatever, I have this thing, 0:10:26.160 --> 0:10:30.400 this issue where I'm slower at reading than other people. UM. So, yeah, 0:10:30.440 --> 0:10:35.079 it's probably very much underreported and underestimated how many people 0:10:35.080 --> 0:10:37.960 in the population have at Yeah, and we're talking mainly about, 0:10:38.679 --> 0:10:44.319 almost exclusively about developmental dyslexia, which is, you know, the 0:10:44.400 --> 0:10:47.439 kind we mostly think about. We're not talking about acquired dyslexia, 0:10:47.520 --> 0:10:51.600 which is can happen as a result of an injury um, 0:10:51.679 --> 0:10:53.679 so just want to point that out. Well, let's take 0:10:53.679 --> 0:10:55.480 a break and then we'll come back and talk about 0:10:55.520 --> 0:10:59.440 the history that actually features both of those. Okay, yes, sir, 0:11:27.400 --> 0:11:30.319 so Chuck. The first time the word dyslexia was used 0:11:30.800 --> 0:11:35.040 was in eight two by an ophthalmologist named Rudolph Berlin, 0:11:35.800 --> 0:11:39.160 who coined the term dyslexia. But the case that he 0:11:39.200 --> 0:11:42.920 was describing was a case of acquired dyslexia, where you 0:11:43.000 --> 0:11:47.080 can you can develop the symptoms of dyslexia, trouble reading, 0:11:47.120 --> 0:11:51.440 trouble writing, trouble um sounding out words from a head 0:11:51.480 --> 0:11:55.040 injury or say a lesion on your brain, something like that. 0:11:55.840 --> 0:11:59.800 And that told them a lot, right it really. Initially 0:11:59.840 --> 0:12:02.559 they thought maybe it was just a sign of low intelligence, 0:12:03.120 --> 0:12:05.600 maybe it was a problem with vision or something like that. 0:12:05.840 --> 0:12:09.400 But the fact that you could acquire dyslexia told um 0:12:09.559 --> 0:12:14.360 neurologists and optimologists working in the nineteenth century, No, this 0:12:14.440 --> 0:12:18.160 is a this is a there's a neurobiological basis to this. Yeah. 0:12:18.200 --> 0:12:21.400 And they called it early on um in the nineteenth century, 0:12:21.440 --> 0:12:24.200 and I guess even in the early twentieth century. Well, 0:12:24.240 --> 0:12:26.600 actually they called it that up until the sixties. Yeah. 0:12:26.640 --> 0:12:29.840 The sixties, um word blindness, and they it was a 0:12:29.920 --> 0:12:33.880 German who who coined that term, and they called it 0:12:34.000 --> 0:12:38.120 vart blind height. Can you say that that's good? Okay, 0:12:38.240 --> 0:12:40.080 you would do it only better than well, I would 0:12:40.080 --> 0:12:43.640 put on some dumb voice. But that's perfect pronunciation. You 0:12:43.679 --> 0:12:46.840 said that it's a w right, Yeah, and you said 0:12:46.880 --> 0:12:51.000 it as a va perfect Okay, click my heels together 0:12:51.040 --> 0:12:56.120 and said it checks out, Dorothy. Um. So they called it, 0:12:56.160 --> 0:12:59.720 like you said, up into the sixties, congenital word blindness. Uh, 0:12:59.760 --> 0:13:01.800 there a lot of people in the late eight d 0:13:02.000 --> 0:13:03.800 or not a lot, but a handful of people studying 0:13:03.840 --> 0:13:07.000 the stuff. Henschelwood and were the two big ones. Yeah, 0:13:07.000 --> 0:13:12.280 and they were optimologists and a doctor um Henschelwood was 0:13:12.360 --> 0:13:15.920 the optimologist and they and then there were also neurologist, 0:13:15.920 --> 0:13:20.320 a man named Samuel Orton and uh they they it's 0:13:20.360 --> 0:13:23.839 interesting to look back because they were sort of on 0:13:23.880 --> 0:13:26.840 the right track with how they what they thought was wrong. Yeah. 0:13:26.840 --> 0:13:30.200 Word blindness also as a term, is not that not 0:13:30.360 --> 0:13:32.480 that far off? Yeah? I mean it really does a 0:13:32.480 --> 0:13:35.440 good job describinting the thing because they're saying, like there's 0:13:35.559 --> 0:13:39.200 some condition that these people have specifically because there are 0:13:39.200 --> 0:13:43.920 otherwise totally intelligent. They're just they have a problem with words, 0:13:43.960 --> 0:13:48.000 with seeing words and recognizing them like everybody else can. Yeah, 0:13:48.000 --> 0:13:51.760 And it was obviously since the dawn of time people 0:13:51.760 --> 0:13:55.040 have had this condition, but it didn't obviously if you 0:13:55.080 --> 0:13:56.800 think about it, there are a lot of things that 0:13:56.880 --> 0:14:01.040 came along that really brought it into the forefront, like printing, 0:14:01.440 --> 0:14:05.800 widespread literacy. Yeah, newspapers and books and street signs exactly, 0:14:06.440 --> 0:14:08.920 menus like you're saying in a restaurant. Yeah, Like like 0:14:08.960 --> 0:14:12.679 everywhere there's the printed word and all of this. As 0:14:12.720 --> 0:14:15.079 all of this started to emerge in like the second 0:14:15.080 --> 0:14:17.679 half of the nineteenth century, at least in the United 0:14:17.720 --> 0:14:21.480 States and in the Western europe um, all of a sudden, 0:14:21.520 --> 0:14:27.480 people who had dyslexia suddenly became apparent. Whereas before this 0:14:27.680 --> 0:14:29.640 it wouldn't have been a parent because there was no 0:14:29.800 --> 0:14:34.440 way for dyslexia to manifest itself. People didn't walk around reading. 0:14:34.480 --> 0:14:36.760 You weren't expected to learn to read and write as 0:14:36.800 --> 0:14:39.080 a kid. You had to be like basically a monk 0:14:39.600 --> 0:14:41.920 to to learn to read and write or part of 0:14:41.920 --> 0:14:46.040 like the aristocracy. Now it became democratized in public schooling 0:14:46.080 --> 0:14:49.280 became widespread, and so as a result, dyslexia became a 0:14:49.320 --> 0:14:52.600 thing for the very first time. It's actually a relatively 0:14:52.640 --> 0:14:55.800 new condition that was born out of the modern era. Yeah, 0:14:55.920 --> 0:14:58.400 or if you were a kid back then then you uh, 0:14:58.440 --> 0:15:00.080 they were trying to teach your reading. You could and 0:15:00.240 --> 0:15:02.160 you were you were just they were like, all right, well, 0:15:02.160 --> 0:15:04.760 I guess he's not a reader, so get out to 0:15:04.800 --> 0:15:07.440 the factory of the field and don't worry about it. 0:15:07.480 --> 0:15:11.040 But the that was what Morgan, like w Pringle Morrigan 0:15:11.160 --> 0:15:13.720 and James Henchelwood were doing was they were the first 0:15:13.720 --> 0:15:16.320 ones to say, wait, wait, wait, get that kid out 0:15:16.320 --> 0:15:19.080 of the field, because he seems otherwise bright to me. 0:15:19.640 --> 0:15:22.080 He just is having trouble reading. This might just be 0:15:22.160 --> 0:15:24.600 a thing. So they were the first ones to say, no, 0:15:24.680 --> 0:15:27.680 this is its own thing. This isn't just being being 0:15:27.800 --> 0:15:32.240 generally slow. This is a specific learning disability, right. Uh. 0:15:32.280 --> 0:15:36.240 Samuel Orton, the neurologists I mentioned, he created the Orton 0:15:36.320 --> 0:15:41.680 Society in nineteen forty nine. Um, they were researchers and teachers, uh, 0:15:42.000 --> 0:15:43.880 trying to figure out like, all right, we know this 0:15:43.960 --> 0:15:45.680 is a problem. Now how do we go about teaching 0:15:45.760 --> 0:15:49.360 kids like this and that eventually led to the International 0:15:49.760 --> 0:15:54.760 Dyslexia Association. Um, but it really took until the like 0:15:54.800 --> 0:15:58.920 the nineteen seventies. That was a book written by McDonald 0:15:59.080 --> 0:16:02.440 Critchley called The Ayslexic Child, And that's when things really 0:16:02.520 --> 0:16:05.000 started to come to the forefront more. Yeah, they started 0:16:05.000 --> 0:16:09.480 to realize, oh wait, you can teach kids with dyslexia 0:16:09.520 --> 0:16:11.760 how to read, so maybe we should start doing that, 0:16:11.960 --> 0:16:14.440 right And here are here are the symptoms and the 0:16:14.480 --> 0:16:17.680 signs of dyslexia, and let's let's take it seriously in 0:16:17.760 --> 0:16:20.720 the general education system. Yeah. And one of the interesting 0:16:20.760 --> 0:16:23.760 things that they learned, uh, they have learned over the 0:16:23.840 --> 0:16:26.840 years is part of the problem, at least in the 0:16:26.840 --> 0:16:30.360 case of English, is that it's a really tough language 0:16:30.400 --> 0:16:34.440 to learn, extraordinarily tough, and it matters if you have dyslexia. 0:16:34.640 --> 0:16:36.960 When compared to Italian, it says English has over a 0:16:36.960 --> 0:16:40.360 thousand ways to spell it's basic set of forty uh 0:16:40.440 --> 0:16:46.320 phonological sounds. Italian has twenty five speech sounds speech sounds 0:16:46.320 --> 0:16:50.080 and only thirty three ways to spell them. So incidences 0:16:50.160 --> 0:16:55.120 of dyslexia, while they may be the same technically in Italy, 0:16:56.000 --> 0:16:58.440 kids don't have as much of a problem in Italy. Yeah, 0:16:58.680 --> 0:17:03.080 like thinking about this, so that short E sound you 0:17:03.120 --> 0:17:07.120 can spell it ai as in said EO is in leopard, 0:17:07.600 --> 0:17:12.600 You is in Barry, I E is in friend. Okay, 0:17:12.640 --> 0:17:15.080 it is tough. But what you're doing is when you're 0:17:15.119 --> 0:17:20.359 when you're spelling those things, you're you're encoding a sound. 0:17:20.359 --> 0:17:23.320 A phoneeme is what it's called. And like you said, 0:17:23.359 --> 0:17:26.560 in English, we have forty phonemes. And when you spell, 0:17:27.000 --> 0:17:30.919 when you read, your encoding and decoding a phoneme. And 0:17:30.960 --> 0:17:34.359 we have attached phone emes onto specific things out in 0:17:34.400 --> 0:17:38.879 real life. Leopard, right, if you can spell leopard, you 0:17:38.920 --> 0:17:41.760 can write down that word, and you can create a 0:17:41.840 --> 0:17:45.240 leopard in somebody else's mind's eye by reading it. Okay, 0:17:45.280 --> 0:17:47.800 this is all spectacular that we can do this, but 0:17:47.840 --> 0:17:51.800 it's a totally human construct. If you have dyslexia, you're 0:17:52.560 --> 0:17:56.000 the ground problem that that is the basis of your 0:17:56.000 --> 0:18:00.560 condition is you have trouble sorting through phonemes. You have 0:18:00.640 --> 0:18:04.880 trouble um with what's called phonological awareness, where you hear 0:18:06.160 --> 0:18:11.720 in part as two separate distinct sounds that you can 0:18:11.840 --> 0:18:15.600 learn to spell and learn to write. You you can't 0:18:15.680 --> 0:18:19.480 sort them sometimes they run together. It's a it's a 0:18:19.520 --> 0:18:25.760 problem on the very basis of reading, writing, spelling, the phonology. 0:18:25.880 --> 0:18:28.919 You have trouble. Your brain has trouble processing it and 0:18:29.000 --> 0:18:32.239 sorting it. That's the basis of dyslexia. So if you 0:18:32.240 --> 0:18:35.919 are a kid with dyslexia in in learning English with 0:18:36.040 --> 0:18:38.320 as difficult as it is, where there's all these different 0:18:38.359 --> 0:18:41.840 rules for the same phoneme, it's gonna be way harder 0:18:42.040 --> 0:18:44.720 than it isn't something like Italian, like you're saying, Yeah, 0:18:44.760 --> 0:18:47.399 And as a result, as you would imagine, learning a 0:18:47.440 --> 0:18:50.679 second language if you have dyslexia is really tough. But 0:18:50.760 --> 0:18:55.159 they have found that Italian is can almost be like 0:18:55.200 --> 0:18:59.760 a therapy, a training like jam camp for learning really interesting, Yeah, 0:19:00.160 --> 0:19:02.800 because you learn, Oh there's rules with certain things, but 0:19:02.920 --> 0:19:05.640 these are really basic rules and they make sense. So 0:19:05.680 --> 0:19:08.600 maybe now I can learn English UM a little more 0:19:08.720 --> 0:19:13.399 easily with the expectation that the rules are structurally the same. 0:19:13.440 --> 0:19:16.119 But they're just different for English than they are for Italian. 0:19:16.760 --> 0:19:20.720 In nuance, but ultimately they're getting across the same stuff. Yeah, 0:19:20.760 --> 0:19:26.639 the the whole concept of language and um and symbols, e, 0:19:26.920 --> 0:19:32.160 letters and words, it's just fascinating to me, endlessly fascinating. Yeah, 0:19:32.200 --> 0:19:35.280 because again and the humans like creating this and saying 0:19:35.280 --> 0:19:38.400 that thing of it there. If you draw these symbols 0:19:38.400 --> 0:19:41.800 in this order, that's what that is. So that leopard like, 0:19:41.960 --> 0:19:44.960 that's and then the word leopard like. Yeah, it's just 0:19:45.040 --> 0:19:48.680 all fascinating. It is because you're encapsulating knowledge that can 0:19:48.680 --> 0:19:50.959 be shared later on, can be unlocked later on by 0:19:51.000 --> 0:19:54.600 anyone who understands how to decode it in the same way. Yeah, 0:19:54.600 --> 0:19:58.639 what's the science? Uh? What was it called? When you 0:19:58.680 --> 0:20:01.840 study that linguists? Is it just linguistics? I'm pretty sure 0:20:02.080 --> 0:20:04.760 I could have been a linguist if I had only 0:20:04.800 --> 0:20:10.240 known what it was called. I just realized happy thing 0:20:10.320 --> 0:20:13.240 that would have dumped them. What's that thing called? Yeah? 0:20:13.280 --> 0:20:15.640 I could have been good at that? Yeah, yeah I couldn't. 0:20:15.720 --> 0:20:19.119 It was on the tip of my tongue. So um, 0:20:19.160 --> 0:20:21.520 I guess we can talk about the the fm R 0:20:21.560 --> 0:20:24.720 I and the m R I. Obviously, the Wonder Machine 0:20:24.760 --> 0:20:27.240 figures in pretty big when it comes to this kind 0:20:27.240 --> 0:20:30.560 of thing, and in the mid nineties is about when 0:20:30.560 --> 0:20:33.440 the fm R I came on the scene. With dyslexia 0:20:33.520 --> 0:20:36.960 and studies with dyslexia once they one of the problems 0:20:37.040 --> 0:20:39.879 was little kids. They're like, oh, we can't throw them 0:20:39.920 --> 0:20:42.840 in there, that they will explode their brain. And then 0:20:42.840 --> 0:20:44.800 they're like, oh no, the fm r I machine is 0:20:44.840 --> 0:20:47.040 fine for kids. We tested it out on some bad 0:20:47.119 --> 0:20:50.359 kids and they were fine, and so they started putting 0:20:50.440 --> 0:20:53.639 children in there. Um, because you could obviously do this 0:20:53.680 --> 0:20:57.199 at any age, but it's important for school aged children, 0:20:57.840 --> 0:21:00.280 um to like figure out what's going on in their brains. Well, 0:21:00.320 --> 0:21:04.199 that's one of the reasons why that's the sample population 0:21:04.280 --> 0:21:10.080 is because it takes years for dyslexia to be prominent. 0:21:11.000 --> 0:21:15.040 Every kid has problems learning, reading, and writing at first, 0:21:15.760 --> 0:21:19.560 but then as other kids progress and this one kid doesn't, 0:21:19.720 --> 0:21:23.560 but there are otherwise bright same socioeconomic opportunities and all 0:21:23.600 --> 0:21:27.119 that stuff. Um, that's when it becomes possible that they 0:21:27.200 --> 0:21:30.000 have dyslexia. But by that time a couple more years 0:21:30.000 --> 0:21:34.040 have gone by, right, So you're not you're not testing 0:21:34.080 --> 0:21:37.879 for dyslexia on babies. You have to wait until it 0:21:38.000 --> 0:21:41.560 basically manifests itself. Yeah, And of course with the f 0:21:41.680 --> 0:21:43.960 m R I they I think there was some hope 0:21:44.000 --> 0:21:46.760 that it could Like you mentioned earlier, just be like, well, 0:21:46.880 --> 0:21:49.760 there it is, but you know it wasn't. It wasn't 0:21:49.760 --> 0:21:52.320 as they you know, different regions of the brain would 0:21:52.359 --> 0:21:54.439 light up or not light up, but they didn't get 0:21:54.480 --> 0:21:58.760 any hard like pinpointing conclusions. No, they have kind of 0:21:58.800 --> 0:22:02.600 focused in on a few spots, like different studies have said, 0:22:02.920 --> 0:22:05.040 this is what we found, and it actually correlates with 0:22:05.040 --> 0:22:09.560 other studies too. There's um left hemisphere areas, the ventral 0:22:09.560 --> 0:22:14.760 occipito temporal region, the temporal parietal reagion, and the inferior 0:22:14.880 --> 0:22:19.560 frontal cortices which have to do with language processing, but 0:22:19.680 --> 0:22:25.160 also visual processing of language too. Yeah. So again they 0:22:25.359 --> 0:22:27.560 think that the basis of all of this is that 0:22:27.640 --> 0:22:31.160 when you're hearing sounds, when somebody's holding up a piece 0:22:31.200 --> 0:22:35.880 of bread that has been dried through heat and says toast, 0:22:37.040 --> 0:22:41.480 you're hearing toast, and you can learn to write T 0:22:41.760 --> 0:22:46.600 O A it's a little confounding, and then st over time, 0:22:46.640 --> 0:22:49.200 maybe the first few times you write t O E 0:22:49.400 --> 0:22:52.119 S T, it doesn't matter. You're going to learn to 0:22:52.160 --> 0:22:54.880 write T O A S T and you can write 0:22:54.880 --> 0:22:56.320 it down and then someone else can read it. And 0:22:56.320 --> 0:23:00.119 they think of toast with dyslexia you're not hearing to 0:23:01.080 --> 0:23:04.840 your your you, and you certainly can't extrapolate something that 0:23:04.880 --> 0:23:09.199 you're not hearing correctly into words and letters. Yeah, yeah, Okay, 0:23:09.359 --> 0:23:12.280 it's a good way to put it. The tost analogy there, 0:23:12.320 --> 0:23:15.760 you got, Uh, there is a genetic component. Um, you 0:23:15.760 --> 0:23:18.680 are likely, if you have dyslexi to also have other 0:23:18.720 --> 0:23:21.560 family members who have it. And they have isolated some 0:23:21.600 --> 0:23:25.080 genes associated with it. But again they haven't been like 0:23:25.160 --> 0:23:27.399 here's the cause. Let's just figure out how to switch 0:23:27.440 --> 0:23:30.440 this gene off or on right, And it's I think 0:23:30.440 --> 0:23:34.080 it's just correlated. It's not necessarily the cause. It's it's 0:23:34.160 --> 0:23:36.480 like people who have who have been shown to have 0:23:36.560 --> 0:23:40.960 dyslexia have these this set of genes that are doing this. Yeah, 0:23:40.960 --> 0:23:42.880 but what, like I said earlier, what's interesting is those 0:23:42.880 --> 0:23:47.240 early doctors weren't super far off. It does have to 0:23:47.280 --> 0:23:52.720 do with visual processing of this linguistic information, and they 0:23:52.720 --> 0:23:55.160 were on the right track even way back then, so 0:23:55.320 --> 0:23:58.760 not bad. And then even still though with this new 0:23:58.840 --> 0:24:01.960 understanding of like, ok, this brain region looks like this, 0:24:01.960 --> 0:24:04.919 this brain region looks like that, this is the sign 0:24:04.960 --> 0:24:10.760 of a dyslexic brain, there's still the question is this 0:24:10.880 --> 0:24:14.720 the result of going years and years without reading um? 0:24:15.560 --> 0:24:18.800