from the book, SMART BUT FEELING DUMB by Dr Harold LevinsonFour Major Inner-Ear Functions
1. THE GUIDED - MISSILE FUNCTION
It acts as a guided-missile computer system - guiding our eyes, hands,
hands, feet, and various mental and physical functions in time and
space. Thus, a disorder within this system may deflect our eyes while
they reflexively and automatically fixate and sequentially track
letters, words, and sentences while we read. The dyslexic's reading
process is characterized letter, word, and sentence fixation and
tracking difficulties, requiring compensatory slow reading, finger
pointing, the use of cards, etc. What's more, the resulting visual
scrambling will trigger the insertion and omission of words, the
illusion of new words formed from word parts separated by unseen
distances, etc. Frequently words will be experienced as blurred or in
movement, requiring compensatory blinking and squinting in order to
restabilize as the drifting input.
In as much as the tracking is coarse and jerky, the reading process
becomes tiring and unpleasant. Often these discoordinated or clumsy
eye movements, mistakenly referred to as apractic, keep retargeting
the same words in a sentence over and over again, a process clinically
labeled ocular perseveration.
If the hand holding a pen is misguided in space, our writing will look
"discombulated" or "dysgraphic". Most often the writing will drift
off the horizontal line if unlined paper is used and if concentration
and effort are not used to extraordinary degrees.
If our hands, our feet, or our speech mechanisms are not accurately
guided in space and time, a wide range of discoordinated, clumsy acts
or "Freudian slips" will occur ("dyslexic slips").
2. THE SENSORIMOTOR FINE-TUNING FUNCTION
The inner-ear system also acts like the vertical and horizontal knobs
on a television set. fine-tunes all motor (voluntary and involuntary)
responses leaving the brain and all sensory responses coming into the
brain.
If voluntary motor responses leaving the brain are improperly
finetuned, one's motor acts become discoordinated and imbalanced,
resulting in delayed speech; impaired ability to walk; difficulty
tying shoelaces, buttoning buttons, zippering zippers, holding and
using writing implements; and speech disturbances, such as slurring
and stuttering.
If voluntary motor responses leaving the brain are improperly
fine-tuned, then toilet-training delays may arise, as well as such
symptoms as bed-wetting and soiling.
If the sensory input to the brain is properly fine-tuned, then this
input will drift or scramble. The thinking brain, however bright,
receiving drifting, scrambled input will have difficulty with
interpretation, memory, and concentration. If the drift is 180
degrees, then reversals occur, both for incoming and outgoing signals.
Even a genius watching and/or listening to a drifting input (or a
drifting TV channel) will have great difficulty remembering and
concentrating on the picture seen and heard. Variations in the
drifting will account for variations in the degree of clarity. Some
segments will be seen and heard clearly, while others will only
partially be seen and heard, and others will be completely blurred
out, resulting in compensatory guessing and even illusions.
If this very same genius is asked about the content of what he
observed on the TV show, he will not be able to answer too many
questions. And if this genius is unaware that his difficulties are due
to the drifting of the TV's image, then he will instinctively feel
stupid, regardless of his IQ. In fact, the smarter he is, the more
frustrated he will become and the dumber he will feel.
Most of the time, compliments make bright dyslexic kids feel worse.
These kids know they are not able to grasp, remember, and reproduce
information as well as their classmates or as well as their instincts
and feelings tell them that they should. Reassuring these children
that they are smart when they instinctively feel frustrated and stupid
often makes them feel worse. They feel they are being lied to in order
to make them feel better, to make them feel less stupid. Thus they
conclude that they really are dumb; otherwise the compliments and
reassurances would not be necessary.
In other words, bright dyslexics are instinctively aware of the many
difficulties they have, and therefore react with feelings of
stupidity. Although reassurance does not reverse feeling stupid - and
in fact, may seem to heighten it - it is nevertheless crucial because
it keeps dyslexics going and striving until compensation occurs - if
it occurs.
Criticism, on the other hand, is felt very deeply, for it their gut
feelings of stupidity, resulting in a deeper sense of inadequacy.
How can teacher help but view these children as "stupid,"
"indifferent", and "defiant," especially if the teacher is viewing and
judging them as if from the backside of the TV set? If, by analogy,
the teacher does not see or hear the drift, he or she will naturally
assume that the child is watching and listening to a simple, clear TV
picture. Thus, the teacher cannot comprehend the resulting errors and
learning disabilities. Moreover, the child is watching and listening
to the drifting TV channel will lose his concentration and become
distracted and restless. He'll want to get away from this frustrating
input and change TV channels - to those coming in clearly.
By analogy this experience is very similar to how one reacts to motion
sickness. Instinctively, one wants to eliminate the input,either by
fight or flight.
If a child can't play hooky or change his channel in school by means
of distracting mechanisms, he'll fight. If his anger and fight are
inwardly directed, he'll become depressed and give up. If his anger is
acted out, he'll be viewed as a behavior problem with disruptive
tendencies. Children will sometimes unconsciously behave in a manner
that provokes authorities to suspend or expel them from school, thus
attempting to get out of a most frustrating and humiliating situation.
At other times, underlying guilt associated with feeling stupid and
inadequate will trigger mechanisms that invite punishment and
consequently alleviate guilt - a most unfortunate cycle. If, on the
other hand, a child tries to avoid the frustrating drifting channel
altogether, he'll be labeled as a "school phobic."
In order to understand all the variations and compexities of the
dyslexic disorder, one has to carry the TV analogy a few steps
farther.
Pictures the brain as a giant TV set with millions and millions of
specific channels. Imagine each separate event as being independently
processed on its own wavelength or TV channel. Thus, one channel may
drift while another remains fine-tuned. One channel may drift mildly
vertically while another drifts horizontally. One channel may drift
from right to left while another drifts from left to right. On and on
the possibilities go, accounting for the diverse combinations of
symptoms seen from patient to patient and from sample to sample.
Futhermore, the fine-tuners may vary in function from moment to
moment, depending on a series of known and unknown variables and
circumstances. Spontaneous variations in the fine-tuning mechanisms
may result in corresponding variations in symptoms from time to time,
most often beyond the individual's control. Allergies, seasonal
influences, foods, sugars, even changes in humidity, altitude, and
barometric pressure may trigger signal-drifting, accounting for
regression and symptomatic changes.
3. THE COMPASS FUNCTION
The inner ear is also a compass system. It reflexively tells us
spatial relationships such as right and left, up and down, front and
back, east and west, and north and south. If this compass system isn't
working efficiently, one must use one's brain to devise such
consciously directed compensatory methods as wearing a ring or a watch
on one hand, or recalling which hand has a scar or was broken or was
used to pledge allegiance.
The inner ear/cerebellum tells us where all body parts are in space and time as well as integrating all these signals into a hologram called "body image." Needless to say, disturbances in this scheme result in body and self image distortions or negative illusions, explaining the reason this impairment often triggers feeling dumb,ugly,and so on, regardless of normal or above-average IQ and physical appearance.
This compass system directs all body functions: sensory, motor,
speech, thought, even----------- biophysical patterns. Moreover, one sequence may
be misdirected or scrambled while another remains unaffected or
compensated for and is seemingly unaffected or compensated for and is seemingly unaffected.
4. THE TIMING AND RHYTHMIC FUNCTION
The inner ear also acts as a timing mechanism, setting rhythms to
motor tasks. A disturbance within this system may result in difficulty
in learning to tell time and sensing time. Frequently, dyslexic
children do not know before from after and can't sense whether a
minute, an hour, or several hours have gone by. Accordingly, dyslexic
individuals may become "compulsively" late or early. Speech timing may
be off, resulting in slow or rapid talkers and even dysrhythmic
talkers, or stutterers.
The inner-ear system - better yet the cerebellum or brain of animals -
enables us to rapidly process and maintain the sequence of all
sensorimotor signals by adaptively slowing down or inhibiting the rate
of transmission speeds. A failure in this and related functioning will
result in, and thus readily explain, the series of typically reported
speed and motion illusions. Thus, for example, dyslexics typically
report seeing cars moving too fast, hearing speech too rapidly to
normally interpret without extra time or repetition, experiencing
themselves and other stationary objects in motion or vibrating
(oscillopsia), etc. A similar failure to regulate the speed and order
of motor signals will often result in difficulties with rapid or
reflex balance and coordination tasks, speech and writing included.
In many ways, these timing or temporal disturbances are analogous to
the spatial illusions in which dyslexics report seeing objects smaller
or larger or reversed - symptoms called micropsia, macropsia, and
reversals, respectively. Accordingly, I came to view dyslexia as an
inner-ear-determined spatial-temporal and sensorimotor dysfunction in
equilibrium with compensatory vectors.
Any combination of these inner-ear functions may be impaired.
Similarly, any mechanism may be compensated for, or even
overcompensated for. By recognizing that the impaired mechanisms
underlying dyslexic symptoms are in a dynamic equilibrium with
compensatory factors, a concept of symptom formation evolves in which
each symptom is viewed as a result of opposing forces, dysfunctioning
versus compensatory. If gifted functions are also taken into
consideration, as are self-corrective versus regressive forces, then
we have truly arrived at the concepts needed to understand dyslexics
and their fascinating disorder.
The above-described inner-ear mechanisms and concepts have resulted in
the first comprehensive explanation of why and how the various
theories about dyslexia and their corresponding therapies, including
my own, work or do not work.