WEBVTT - Selects: How Dyslexia Works 0:00:00.760 --> 0:00:01.680 Hey there, everybody. 0:00:01.760 --> 0:00:06.760 Chuck here picking out a Saturday episode, a classic Stuff 0:00:06.760 --> 0:00:11.760 you Should Know, curated and handpicked by me to you Valentine, 0:00:11.800 --> 0:00:14.560 if you will. And this one is from March twenty nineteen, 0:00:14.800 --> 0:00:18.279 and it's about dyslexia. And this one hits close to 0:00:18.320 --> 0:00:21.759 home for me now and I enjoyed going back and 0:00:21.760 --> 0:00:23.800 re listening to it so I could relearn myself. 0:00:24.120 --> 0:00:25.439 So I hope you do as well. 0:00:25.480 --> 0:00:30.800 And it's called How Dyslexia Works. 0:00:32.159 --> 0:00:39.960 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:41.880 --> 0:00:44.840 Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles 0:00:44.960 --> 0:00:47.839 w Chuck Bryan over there, and there's Jerry, And this 0:00:47.880 --> 0:00:51.360 is Stuff you Should Know about dyslexia. How are you 0:00:51.400 --> 0:00:52.600 doing good? Good? 0:00:52.760 --> 0:00:53.199 How are you? 0:00:53.560 --> 0:00:56.880 I'm doing pretty good, man, Just you know, hanging out 0:00:57.680 --> 0:00:59.920 over here. Yeah, ready to wrap. 0:01:01.040 --> 0:01:03.240 I thought this is pretty cool. I'm surprised that we 0:01:03.320 --> 0:01:03.600 had not. 0:01:04.240 --> 0:01:07.880 Discussed this yet because it's right up our alley, totally 0:01:08.000 --> 0:01:11.000 very stuff you Should Know type show. Yeah, and I 0:01:11.000 --> 0:01:12.679 think it's an interesting uh. 0:01:14.200 --> 0:01:16.640 You know, I guess it's labeled a learning disorder. 0:01:17.360 --> 0:01:21.480 Most most definitely it's a specific learning disorder. According to 0:01:21.520 --> 0:01:22.400 the US government. 0:01:22.480 --> 0:01:22.640 Yeah. 0:01:22.680 --> 0:01:25.119 I always just have a hard time, what you know, 0:01:25.120 --> 0:01:28.120 knowing whether or not to like almost at affliction them, like, 0:01:28.280 --> 0:01:29.040 is that an affliction? 0:01:29.080 --> 0:01:29.680 I don't even know. 0:01:30.560 --> 0:01:33.640 I think it's I think anybody with dyslexia and anybody 0:01:33.680 --> 0:01:36.679 any expert in the field would say it's a learning disability. 0:01:36.720 --> 0:01:42.160 It's a specific learning disability that that we're not entirely 0:01:42.240 --> 0:01:46.039 certain what causes it. But most people would tell you 0:01:46.120 --> 0:01:50.800 that typically it's considered a neurobiological condition. They think that 0:01:50.840 --> 0:01:54.840 there's a basis to the brain that leads to this 0:01:55.200 --> 0:02:03.280 situation where otherwise bright and capable yep and intelligent students 0:02:03.800 --> 0:02:08.600 have what they call unexpected difficulty learning to read, and 0:02:08.600 --> 0:02:11.960 that it afflicts them their entire life. Yeah, but there's 0:02:12.440 --> 0:02:15.880 a lot of questions, yes, that surround the definition. And 0:02:16.320 --> 0:02:19.880 one of the problems with dyslexia research is that that's 0:02:20.040 --> 0:02:23.520 that that's not the official definition. There's about as many 0:02:23.560 --> 0:02:25.960 definitions as there are studies of dyslexia. 0:02:26.400 --> 0:02:29.399 Yeah, this one from Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity 0:02:29.600 --> 0:02:32.359 made sense to me though, as far as just sort 0:02:32.360 --> 0:02:35.600 of a simple way to say it, an unexpected difficulty 0:02:35.639 --> 0:02:38.480 in reading in an individual who has the intelligence to 0:02:38.480 --> 0:02:42.000 be a much better reader. So in other words, like, 0:02:42.200 --> 0:02:46.320 this isn't adding up. All the tools are there and 0:02:46.400 --> 0:02:48.640 you should be a better reader than you are, but 0:02:48.680 --> 0:02:51.040 you're not. So why what gives? 0:02:51.240 --> 0:02:56.639 Yeah, So there's there's there's a lot to that though, right, 0:02:56.760 --> 0:03:01.119 Like there's this idea that if if we know enough 0:03:01.120 --> 0:03:03.320 about the brain and we have things like MRIs and 0:03:03.320 --> 0:03:05.960 stuff like that, so you would think that by now, 0:03:06.000 --> 0:03:08.680 since maybe the nineties or whatever, we would have positively 0:03:08.720 --> 0:03:12.280 identified what it is. But there's a confounding problem that 0:03:12.280 --> 0:03:16.480 they've run into in dyslexic dyslexia research, and we'll get 0:03:16.480 --> 0:03:20.240 into it more later, But they haven't figured out if 0:03:20.280 --> 0:03:24.919 what they're looking at is the changes that would come 0:03:24.960 --> 0:03:30.400 from not reading as much, or if the brain structure 0:03:30.440 --> 0:03:34.600 they're seeing is actually dyslexia. Right, so they're having trouble 0:03:34.639 --> 0:03:36.120 with it. I'll explain it better later. 0:03:36.600 --> 0:03:37.640 No, but I know what you mean. 0:03:37.800 --> 0:03:39.640 Well, good as long as you do. But it also 0:03:39.720 --> 0:03:42.200 counts as like the million or so people listening to 0:03:42.240 --> 0:03:42.920 this also do. 0:03:44.600 --> 0:03:50.200 Hey, everybody dyslexia is very studying it and understanding it 0:03:50.280 --> 0:03:54.760 and learning how to teach children with the dyslexia is 0:03:54.840 --> 0:03:59.320 very important because up until semi recently, I'm just going 0:03:59.400 --> 0:04:02.800 to go say recently, if you were had dyslexia and 0:04:02.840 --> 0:04:06.160 you were a student, you might have been called stupid 0:04:06.320 --> 0:04:08.840 or dumb, and you might have been teacher, yeah, you 0:04:08.920 --> 0:04:13.200 might have been put at a separate table and said, well, 0:04:13.320 --> 0:04:15.960 you go over here because we you can't keep up 0:04:17.279 --> 0:04:17.960 this one guy. 0:04:18.120 --> 0:04:19.920 Man, this one really hit home, or not. 0:04:19.920 --> 0:04:23.120 Hit home, but hitch in the bread basket. 0:04:22.760 --> 0:04:27.719 In the bread basket, which is like home. Pulitzer Prize 0:04:27.760 --> 0:04:31.440 winner Philip Schultz was diagnosed later in life, and he said, 0:04:31.480 --> 0:04:34.840 growing up in the nineteen fifties, he said, basically he 0:04:34.920 --> 0:04:37.720 was placed in what he called the dummy class. Three 0:04:37.960 --> 0:04:40.679 children in his class were separated, put at a table 0:04:40.680 --> 0:04:42.720 in the corner. The teacher didn't talk to them much. 0:04:43.200 --> 0:04:47.000 And essentially one day like the principal was coming around 0:04:47.040 --> 0:04:50.400 and she said, here these books, pretend to read them. 0:04:50.960 --> 0:04:52.400 Right, the principle's coming. 0:04:52.600 --> 0:04:54.479 Yeah. Man, that is just tough. 0:04:54.600 --> 0:04:58.120 But there's something really significant about that. That was a 0:04:58.200 --> 0:05:01.960 column written by a guy named Philip Schultz, who is 0:05:02.000 --> 0:05:05.760 a Pulitzer Prize winner. So that really kind of reveals 0:05:05.800 --> 0:05:09.120 the fact that what they figured out through decades and 0:05:09.160 --> 0:05:13.000 decades of research is that people with dyslexia aren't stupid. 0:05:13.440 --> 0:05:18.920 They specifically have trouble learning to read and spell and write, 0:05:19.360 --> 0:05:21.440 and more and more research has kind of gotten to 0:05:21.520 --> 0:05:25.120 the root of the problems with dyslexia. But we have 0:05:25.320 --> 0:05:31.520 found that with patients and practice, people with dyslexia can 0:05:31.600 --> 0:05:34.719 learn to read. You have dyslexia your entire life. There's 0:05:34.760 --> 0:05:37.480 no cure for it, but you can learn to read, 0:05:37.839 --> 0:05:41.720 and you can learn to navigate and cope with dyslexia 0:05:41.839 --> 0:05:44.000 as a child and into adulthood. 0:05:44.200 --> 0:05:46.120 Yeah, and I don't want to certainly don't want to 0:05:46.160 --> 0:05:48.240 sound like I'm bagging on teachers, because you know, both 0:05:48.240 --> 0:05:51.839 of my parents are teachers, and even back in the 0:05:51.920 --> 0:05:56.400 day when you know, let me just say this, teachers 0:05:56.440 --> 0:05:59.320 back then didn't have the same tools that they have today, 0:05:59.839 --> 0:06:03.760 and they didn't have an understanding of dyslexia. So if 0:06:03.760 --> 0:06:07.160 they had students that weren't keeping up and would force 0:06:07.200 --> 0:06:10.080 the class to maybe lag behind, they may not have 0:06:10.720 --> 0:06:13.320 made the best decisions, but they didn't have all the 0:06:13.320 --> 0:06:15.440 tools at their disposal to make better decisions. 0:06:15.560 --> 0:06:17.720 Right, the presence of a kid with dyslexia in a 0:06:17.800 --> 0:06:21.840 class creates a conundrum. Do you slow the class down 0:06:21.880 --> 0:06:26.320 to that kid's speed and as far as like reading 0:06:26.360 --> 0:06:33.000 and spelling and writing lessons go, potentially risking like slowing 0:06:33.040 --> 0:06:34.760 down the rest of the class who are learning at 0:06:34.760 --> 0:06:37.719 a normal clip. Or do you take this guy with 0:06:37.760 --> 0:06:40.240 dyslexia or this girl with dyslexia and put them in 0:06:40.279 --> 0:06:45.880 a special needs class that may address their reading and writing, 0:06:45.960 --> 0:06:48.880 but they're going to get so far behind their classmates 0:06:48.920 --> 0:06:53.120 and every other subject that they're normally proficient at. It's 0:06:53.160 --> 0:06:56.120 a problem, and they had no idea how to grapple 0:06:56.440 --> 0:06:59.080 with it for almost all of the twentieth century, and 0:06:59.440 --> 0:07:03.120 multiple generations of kids with dyslexia suffered as a result. 0:07:03.240 --> 0:07:06.360 Yeah, it's really sad. There are a lot of symptoms 0:07:06.760 --> 0:07:11.360 for dyslexia, key symptoms, and these are very important because 0:07:11.400 --> 0:07:14.120 there is no blood tests, There is no there's no 0:07:14.920 --> 0:07:16.400 even I mean, there are a lot of testing they 0:07:16.400 --> 0:07:19.000 can do, but that there's no standardized, specific tests that 0:07:19.400 --> 0:07:20.800 will really nail it down. 0:07:20.720 --> 0:07:23.840 Right, So so keep that in mind. There's no there's 0:07:23.880 --> 0:07:28.200 no official definition of dyslexia. Yeah, and there's no specific 0:07:28.280 --> 0:07:32.360 tests to suss out dyslexia, right, two big problems. 0:07:32.400 --> 0:07:34.560 Yeah, so you got to look at this collection of symptoms. 0:07:35.760 --> 0:07:38.760 The first obvious one is slow reading and accurate reading, 0:07:39.480 --> 0:07:44.680 difficulty sounding out words, difficulty pronouncing longer words with multiple syllables, 0:07:44.680 --> 0:07:45.320 which we'll. 0:07:45.160 --> 0:07:45.920 Get to that in a bit. 0:07:48.560 --> 0:07:53.200 Inability to read or speak made up nonsense words, which 0:07:53.200 --> 0:07:57.240 I thought was interesting, Poor short term memory for verbal information, 0:07:57.280 --> 0:08:02.400 whether it's written or spoke spoken. Poor spelling, like really 0:08:02.440 --> 0:08:05.320 poor spelling, to where you sometimes can't even tell what 0:08:05.360 --> 0:08:07.000 the words they're trying to spell are. 0:08:07.000 --> 0:08:09.800 Right, not not just like a you know, like using 0:08:09.800 --> 0:08:12.000 an F instead of a pH or something like that. 0:08:12.200 --> 0:08:14.040 Yeah, and we should also point out too, that is 0:08:14.240 --> 0:08:16.560 it's very much an incorrect notion that if you have 0:08:16.640 --> 0:08:19.640 dyslexia you just transpose letters or spell things backwards. 0:08:19.720 --> 0:08:21.920 That's what I thought for most of my life. Yeah, 0:08:22.040 --> 0:08:25.360 dyslexia was people they spelled things backwards, and that was that, 0:08:25.440 --> 0:08:27.400 and that they also read backwards, and that they could 0:08:27.440 --> 0:08:33.040 train themselves to read things backwards. Right, totally made up, 0:08:33.559 --> 0:08:36.400 It's not totally made up, but it's so such a 0:08:36.440 --> 0:08:40.120 such a just a one component of dyslexia that it 0:08:40.400 --> 0:08:41.920 might as well just be an urban legend. 0:08:42.080 --> 0:08:42.800 Yeah, totally. 0:08:44.200 --> 0:08:47.480 And then what this can lead to. It's not just like, oh, 0:08:47.480 --> 0:08:50.120 I have trouble reading like that. That spills out into 0:08:50.320 --> 0:08:54.320 all aspects of life, whether it's your self esteem, or 0:08:54.640 --> 0:08:59.240 you might have problem with directions directionally, you might have 0:08:59.360 --> 0:09:03.079 issue with your budgets or money items, or you might 0:09:03.120 --> 0:09:08.560 not n tell time very well, frustrated, anger, difficulty planning things. 0:09:08.960 --> 0:09:11.800 It's not just limited to reading issues. 0:09:11.920 --> 0:09:15.600 And then in real life, you might read something and 0:09:15.679 --> 0:09:20.599 have very little recollection of what you just read. You 0:09:21.920 --> 0:09:26.079 will probably have problems giving presentations, finding the right word, 0:09:26.160 --> 0:09:30.040 recalling words, that kind of thing. When you do read, 0:09:30.080 --> 0:09:32.200 and when you learn to read, you will be reading 0:09:32.240 --> 0:09:36.480 slower than anybody else, even reading at your reading level. 0:09:37.480 --> 0:09:40.559 You just do it more slowly. And then as an adult, 0:09:40.679 --> 0:09:43.120 a lot of people are like, oh, good god, I'm 0:09:43.160 --> 0:09:44.880 done with school. Let me just go off and find 0:09:44.920 --> 0:09:47.760 a job that doesn't require any reading or any writing, 0:09:48.320 --> 0:09:50.840 and I will be fine. I will go to restaurants 0:09:50.840 --> 0:09:54.640 and order the same thing at every restaurant. And if 0:09:54.920 --> 0:09:58.400 this routine that I've developed to mask my dyslexia is 0:09:58.440 --> 0:10:01.000 ever interrupted, I will flip out and try to keep 0:10:01.040 --> 0:10:03.880 it under control, but I will seem a little awkward 0:10:04.000 --> 0:10:08.720 socially during instances like this. There's ways you can carve 0:10:08.800 --> 0:10:11.360 out a life for yourself, but you don't have to 0:10:11.440 --> 0:10:14.960 because now we understand dyslexia way more than we did before, 0:10:15.000 --> 0:10:16.600 and we understand the treatment of it too. 0:10:17.000 --> 0:10:19.120 Yeah, and as far as how many people have it, 0:10:19.120 --> 0:10:21.480 it's tough to get because of all these reasons we're 0:10:21.480 --> 0:10:24.520 talking about. Tough to get a good number that's reliable, 0:10:24.559 --> 0:10:28.720 but anywhere between five and fifteen to seventeen percent it 0:10:28.760 --> 0:10:31.679 looks like, which is sort of well, it's not the 0:10:31.679 --> 0:10:32.600 biggest range in the world. 0:10:32.679 --> 0:10:35.959 But they don't really know, No, they have no idea 0:10:36.000 --> 0:10:38.040 because there's a couple of problems. One, there's a lot 0:10:38.080 --> 0:10:41.239 of people out there who don't realize they have dyslexia. 0:10:42.240 --> 0:10:43.640 And then there's a lot of people who do know 0:10:43.679 --> 0:10:46.360 they have dyslexia in are either ashamed of it or 0:10:46.760 --> 0:10:48.960 have just set up their life to where they don't 0:10:48.960 --> 0:10:52.320 have time or room to go be diagnosed and then 0:10:52.400 --> 0:10:55.880 go learn to overcome it. They're just like, whatever, I 0:10:56.000 --> 0:10:58.680 have this thing, this issue where I'm slower at reading 0:10:58.720 --> 0:11:03.520 than other people. So yeah, it's probably very much underreported 0:11:03.600 --> 0:11:06.640 and underestimated how many people in the population have. 0:11:07.040 --> 0:11:12.000 Yeah, and we're talking mainly about, almost exclusively, about developmental dyslexia, 0:11:13.080 --> 0:11:16.520 which is, you know, the kind we mostly think about. 0:11:16.559 --> 0:11:19.440 We're not talking about a choir dyslexia, which is can 0:11:19.480 --> 0:11:20.640 happen as a result. 0:11:20.320 --> 0:11:23.440 Of an injury. So I just want to point that out. 0:11:23.800 --> 0:11:25.640 Well, let's take a break and then we'll come back 0:11:25.640 --> 0:11:30.120 and talk about the history that actually features both of those. Okay, yes, sir, 0:11:58.080 --> 0:12:01.000 so Chuck. The first time the word dysli was used 0:12:01.559 --> 0:12:05.760 was in eighteen seventy two by an ophthalmologist named Rudolph Berlin, 0:12:06.480 --> 0:12:09.800 who coined the term dyslexia. But the case that he 0:12:09.920 --> 0:12:13.600 was describing was a case of acquired dyslexia, where you 0:12:13.640 --> 0:12:17.720 can you can develop the symptoms of dyslexia trouble reading, 0:12:17.800 --> 0:12:22.559 trouble writing, trouble sounding out words from a head injury 0:12:22.840 --> 0:12:26.520 or say a lesion on your brain, something like that. Yeah, 0:12:26.520 --> 0:12:30.480 and that told them a lot, right it really. Initially 0:12:30.559 --> 0:12:33.199 they thought maybe it was just a sign of low intelligence, 0:12:33.800 --> 0:12:36.280 maybe it was a problem with vision or something like that. 0:12:36.480 --> 0:12:41.080 But the fact that you could acquire dyslexia told neurologists 0:12:41.120 --> 0:12:45.160 and optalmologists working in the nineteenth century. No, this is 0:12:45.200 --> 0:12:48.160 a this is a there's a neurobiological basis to this. 0:12:48.640 --> 0:12:52.040 Yeah, and they called it early on in the nineteenth century, 0:12:52.080 --> 0:12:54.880 and I guess even in the early twentieth century. Well, 0:12:54.880 --> 0:12:57.280 actually they called it that up until the sixties. Yeah, 0:12:57.320 --> 0:12:59.319 the sixties word blindness. 0:12:59.600 --> 0:13:03.960 And it was a German who coined that term, and 0:13:04.000 --> 0:13:08.800 they called it vort blindhyped. Can you say that that's good? Okay, 0:13:08.920 --> 0:13:10.760 you would do it way better than well. 0:13:10.520 --> 0:13:13.160 I would put on some dumb voice. But that's perfect pronunciation. 0:13:13.320 --> 0:13:13.680 Okay. 0:13:14.240 --> 0:13:17.280 You said that it's a W right, yeah, and you 0:13:17.320 --> 0:13:18.079 said it is a V. 0:13:18.280 --> 0:13:21.800 Yeah, perfect Okay. They didn't click my heels together, and. 0:13:22.679 --> 0:13:24.720 It checks out, Dorothy. 0:13:26.200 --> 0:13:28.000 So they called it, like you said, up into the sixties, 0:13:28.040 --> 0:13:31.080 congenital little word blindness. Uh. There were a lot of 0:13:31.080 --> 0:13:33.160 people in the late eighteen hundred or not a lot, 0:13:33.200 --> 0:13:34.920 but a handful of people studying this stuff. 0:13:35.040 --> 0:13:37.280 Yeah. Henchelwood and Morgan were the two big ones. 0:13:37.440 --> 0:13:42.960 Yeah, And they were optomologists and a doctor. Henchelwood was 0:13:43.000 --> 0:13:46.559 the optomologist and they and then there were also neurologists. 0:13:46.559 --> 0:13:51.440 A man named Samuel Orton, and uh, they it's interesting 0:13:51.480 --> 0:13:54.640 to look back because they were sort of on the 0:13:54.679 --> 0:13:57.120 right track with how they what they thought was wrong. 0:13:57.320 --> 0:13:59.880 Yeah. Word blindness also is a term. Is not that 0:14:00.800 --> 0:14:03.040 not that far off? Yeah, I mean it really does 0:14:03.080 --> 0:14:05.480 a good job describing the thing, because they're saying, like, 0:14:05.800 --> 0:14:09.840 there's some condition that these people have, specifically because they're 0:14:09.880 --> 0:14:14.640 otherwise totally intelligent. They're just they have a problem with words, 0:14:14.640 --> 0:14:18.000 with seeing words and recognizing them like everybody else can. 0:14:18.480 --> 0:14:21.480 Yeah, And it was obviously since the dawn of time 0:14:22.120 --> 0:14:25.640 people have had this condition, but it didn't obviously if 0:14:25.640 --> 0:14:27.360 you think about it. There are a lot of things 0:14:27.400 --> 0:14:30.640 that came along that really brought it into the forefront, like. 0:14:31.240 --> 0:14:33.960 Printing, widespread literacy. 0:14:33.680 --> 0:14:37.760 Yeah, newspapers and books and street signs exactly, menus like 0:14:37.760 --> 0:14:40.360 you were saying in a restaurant. Yeah, like everywhere there's 0:14:40.400 --> 0:14:41.840 the printed word and all of this. 0:14:43.200 --> 0:14:45.360 As all of this started to emerge in like the 0:14:45.400 --> 0:14:47.880 second half of the nineteenth century, at least in the 0:14:48.000 --> 0:14:52.120 United States and in the Western Europe, all of a sudden, 0:14:52.160 --> 0:14:58.040 people who had dyslexia suddenly became a parent, whereas before 0:14:58.080 --> 0:15:00.120 this it wouldn't have been a parent because they're there 0:15:00.160 --> 0:15:04.280 was no way for dyslexia to manifest itself. People didn't 0:15:04.280 --> 0:15:06.760 walk around reading. You weren't expected to learn to read 0:15:06.800 --> 0:15:08.800 and write as a kid. You had to be like 0:15:08.840 --> 0:15:12.160 basically a monk to learn to read and write, or 0:15:12.240 --> 0:15:16.240 part of the aristocracy. Now it became democratized and public 0:15:16.280 --> 0:15:19.840 schooling became widespread, and so as a result, dyslexia became 0:15:19.880 --> 0:15:22.600 a thing for the very first time. It's actually a 0:15:22.720 --> 0:15:26.040 relatively new condition that was born out of the modern era. 0:15:26.240 --> 0:15:28.800 Yeah, Or if you were a kid back then and 0:15:29.120 --> 0:15:30.880 they were trying to teach you read and you couldn't, 0:15:30.920 --> 0:15:32.880 you were just they were like, all right, well, I 0:15:32.920 --> 0:15:35.440 guess he's not a reader, right, So get out to 0:15:35.480 --> 0:15:37.920 the factory of the field, right, and don't worry about it. 0:15:38.160 --> 0:15:41.920 But that was what Morgan, like w Pringle Morgan and 0:15:42.080 --> 0:15:44.680 James Hinchelwood were doing, was they were the first ones 0:15:44.720 --> 0:15:47.480 to say, wait, wait, get that kid out of the field, 0:15:47.520 --> 0:15:50.800 because he seems otherwise bright to me. He just is 0:15:50.840 --> 0:15:54.080 having trouble reading. This might just be a thing. So 0:15:54.120 --> 0:15:55.640 they were the first ones to say, no, this is 0:15:55.680 --> 0:15:59.400 its own thing. This isn't just being being generally slow. 0:16:00.200 --> 0:16:02.040 Specific learning disability. 0:16:02.160 --> 0:16:06.600 Right, Samuel Orton, the neurologists I mentioned, he created the 0:16:06.720 --> 0:16:11.000 Orton Society in nineteen forty nine. They were researchers and 0:16:11.040 --> 0:16:14.400 teachers trying to figure out like, all right, we know 0:16:14.480 --> 0:16:16.040 this is a problem. Now how do we go about 0:16:16.040 --> 0:16:19.360 teaching kids like this? And that eventually led to the 0:16:19.400 --> 0:16:25.520 International Dyslexia Association, But it really took until the the 0:16:25.600 --> 0:16:30.200 nineteen seventies. That was a book written by McDonald Critchley 0:16:30.280 --> 0:16:33.560 called The Dyslexic Child, And that's when things really started 0:16:33.600 --> 0:16:34.840 to come to the forefront more. 0:16:34.920 --> 0:16:38.080 Yeah, they started to realize, oh, wait, you can teach 0:16:39.120 --> 0:16:41.640 kids with dyslexia how to read, so maybe we should 0:16:41.680 --> 0:16:45.000 start doing that, right, And here are these symptoms and 0:16:45.040 --> 0:16:48.400 the signs of dyslexia, and let's take it seriously in 0:16:48.440 --> 0:16:49.920 the general education system. 0:16:50.120 --> 0:16:50.320 Yeah. 0:16:50.360 --> 0:16:53.760 And one of the interesting things that they learned, they 0:16:53.800 --> 0:16:56.680 have learned over the years is part of the problem, 0:16:56.920 --> 0:16:59.280 at least in the case of English, is that it's 0:16:59.320 --> 0:17:03.120 a really tough language to learn, extraordinarily tough, and it 0:17:03.160 --> 0:17:06.600 matters if you have dyslexia. When compared to Italian. It 0:17:06.600 --> 0:17:09.360 says English has over a thousand ways to spell it's 0:17:09.440 --> 0:17:14.840 basic set of forty phonological sounds. Italian has twenty five 0:17:14.880 --> 0:17:18.399 speech sounds speech sounds and only thirty three ways to 0:17:18.440 --> 0:17:23.359 spell them. So incidences of dyslexia, while they may be 0:17:23.560 --> 0:17:27.560 the same technically in Italy, kids don't have as much 0:17:27.560 --> 0:17:28.560 of a problem in Italy. 0:17:28.720 --> 0:17:31.560 Yeah, like thinking about this, so that the sure e 0:17:31.960 --> 0:17:35.720 sound eh eh, you can spell it ai as in 0:17:35.840 --> 0:17:40.080 staid EO is in leopard, You is in barry, Ie 0:17:40.359 --> 0:17:41.000 is in friend. 0:17:41.760 --> 0:17:43.240 Okay, English is so tough. 0:17:43.320 --> 0:17:46.200 It is tough. But what you're doing is when you're 0:17:46.560 --> 0:17:51.879 spelling those things, you're encoding a sound. A phoneeme is 0:17:51.880 --> 0:17:54.439 what it's called. Right, And like you said, in English, 0:17:54.480 --> 0:17:58.480 we have forty phonemes, and when you spell, when you read, 0:17:58.800 --> 0:18:03.000 you're encoding and coding a phoneme. And we've attached phonemes 0:18:03.040 --> 0:18:07.760 onto specific things out in real life. Leopard, Right, if 0:18:07.800 --> 0:18:10.800 you can spell leopard, you can write down that word 0:18:10.840 --> 0:18:14.040 and you can create a leopard in somebody else's mind's 0:18:14.080 --> 0:18:17.679 eye by reading it. Okay, this is all spectacular that 0:18:17.760 --> 0:18:20.199 we can do this, but it's a totally human construct. 0:18:20.640 --> 0:18:25.840 If you have dyslexia, you're the ground problem that is 0:18:25.880 --> 0:18:29.720 the basis of your condition is you have trouble sorting 0:18:29.760 --> 0:18:34.480 through phonemes. You have trouble with what's called phonological awareness, 0:18:34.480 --> 0:18:41.920 where you hear impart as two separate distinct sounds that 0:18:42.000 --> 0:18:45.440 you can learn to spell and learn to write. You 0:18:45.960 --> 0:18:50.680 can't sort them. Sometimes they run together. It's a problem 0:18:50.800 --> 0:18:56.480 on the very basis of reading, writing, spelling the phonology. 0:18:56.560 --> 0:18:59.960 You have trouble. Your brain has trouble processing it and sorting. 0:19:00.560 --> 0:19:03.600 That's the basis of dyslexia. So if you are a 0:19:03.680 --> 0:19:07.680 kid with dyslexia, in learning English with as difficult as 0:19:07.680 --> 0:19:09.480 it is where there's all these different rules for the 0:19:09.560 --> 0:19:13.040 same phoneme, it's going to be way harder than it 0:19:13.080 --> 0:19:14.320 is in something like Italian. 0:19:14.359 --> 0:19:16.520 Like you were saying, yeah, And as a result, as 0:19:16.600 --> 0:19:19.119 you would imagine, learning a second language if you have 0:19:19.160 --> 0:19:23.879 dyslexia is really tough. But they have found that Italian 0:19:24.960 --> 0:19:26.920 can almost be like a therapy. 0:19:26.800 --> 0:19:30.440 A training like training camp for learn really interesting. Yeah, 0:19:30.800 --> 0:19:33.520 because you learn, Oh there's rules with certain things, but 0:19:33.560 --> 0:19:36.280 these are really basic rules and they make sense. So 0:19:36.359 --> 0:19:39.800 maybe now I can learn English a little more easily 0:19:40.040 --> 0:19:44.080 with the expectation that the rules are structurally the same, 0:19:44.160 --> 0:19:46.159 but they're just different for English than they are for 0:19:46.240 --> 0:19:51.000 Italian in nuance, but ultimately they're getting across the same stuff. 0:19:51.119 --> 0:19:58.000 Yeah, the whole concept of language and symbols, e letters 0:19:58.560 --> 0:20:00.480 and words, it's. 0:20:00.280 --> 0:20:02.560 Just fascinating to me, endlessly fascinating. 0:20:02.680 --> 0:20:05.120 Yeah, because again I don't like the humans. 0:20:04.800 --> 0:20:07.680 Like creating this and saying that thing over there. If 0:20:07.720 --> 0:20:11.000 you draw these symbols in this order, that's what that is. 0:20:11.000 --> 0:20:15.280 See that leopard like, that's and then the word leopard like. Yeah, 0:20:15.320 --> 0:20:16.400 it's just all fascinating. 0:20:16.400 --> 0:20:19.760 It is because you're encapsulating knowledge that can be shared 0:20:19.840 --> 0:20:22.240 later on, can be unlocked later on by anyone who 0:20:22.320 --> 0:20:24.920 understands how to decode it in the same way. 0:20:25.040 --> 0:20:29.320 Yeah, what's the science? What was it called? When you 0:20:29.359 --> 0:20:29.840 study that? 0:20:30.160 --> 0:20:30.840 Linguistics? 0:20:30.960 --> 0:20:31.760 Is it just linguistic? 0:20:31.840 --> 0:20:33.200 I'm pretty sure I could have. 0:20:33.119 --> 0:20:35.640 Been a linguist. Oh yeah, if I had only known 0:20:35.680 --> 0:20:36.280 what it was called. 0:20:36.400 --> 0:20:41.520 Yeah, I just realize how anything that would have dumb 0:20:41.560 --> 0:20:43.400 dumb what's that thing called? 0:20:43.640 --> 0:20:44.840 Yeah, I could have been good at that. 0:20:45.000 --> 0:20:47.199 Yeah, Yeah, I couldn't. It was on the tip of 0:20:47.200 --> 0:20:47.679 my tongue. 0:20:48.200 --> 0:20:52.200 So I guess we can talk about the the fMRI 0:20:52.680 --> 0:20:56.280 and the MRI. Obviously, the Wonder Machine figures in pretty 0:20:56.320 --> 0:20:58.119 big when it comes to this kind of thing. 0:20:58.280 --> 0:20:58.440 Yea. 0:20:58.920 --> 0:21:01.760 And in the mid nineties is about when the fMRI 0:21:01.960 --> 0:21:05.640 came on the scene with dyslexia and studies with dyslexia. 0:21:06.400 --> 0:21:09.919 Once they one of the problems was little kids. You're like, well, 0:21:09.960 --> 0:21:12.400 we can't throw them in there, that they will explode 0:21:12.400 --> 0:21:14.919 their brain. And then they're like, oh no, the fMRI 0:21:15.080 --> 0:21:16.160 machine is fine for kids. 0:21:16.200 --> 0:21:18.560 We tested it out on some bad kids and. 0:21:18.520 --> 0:21:21.520 They were fine, and so they started putting children in 0:21:21.560 --> 0:21:25.040 there because you could obviously do this at any age, 0:21:25.080 --> 0:21:29.320 but it's important for school age children to like figure 0:21:29.320 --> 0:21:30.600 out what's going on in their brains. 0:21:30.680 --> 0:21:34.240 Well, that's one of the reasons why that's the sample 0:21:34.280 --> 0:21:41.440 population is because it takes years for dyslexia to be prominent. Right, 0:21:41.680 --> 0:21:46.199 every kid has problems learning, reading and writing at first, sure, 0:21:46.440 --> 0:21:50.200 but then as other kids progress and this one kid doesn't, 0:21:50.400 --> 0:21:54.840 but they're otherwise bright, same socioeconomic opportunities and all that stuff. 0:21:55.760 --> 0:21:58.959 That's when it becomes possible that they have dyslexia. But 0:21:59.000 --> 0:22:01.280 by that time a couple more years have gone by, 0:22:01.600 --> 0:22:05.400 right right, Yeah, so you're you're not testing for dyslexia 0:22:05.480 --> 0:22:09.120 on babies, right, you have to wait until it basically 0:22:09.160 --> 0:22:10.200 manifests itself. 0:22:10.640 --> 0:22:10.960 Yeah. 0:22:11.000 --> 0:22:13.959 And of course with the fMRI they I think there 0:22:14.040 --> 0:22:16.600 was some hope that it could, like you mentioned earlier, 0:22:16.720 --> 0:22:19.080 just be like, well there it is, yeah, but. 0:22:19.160 --> 0:22:19.960 You know it wasn't. 0:22:20.000 --> 0:22:22.560