posted October 13, 2009 06:09 PM         

Dyslexia among English-speaking and Chinese-speaking people may be the result of different patterns of brain disorder, according to new research.

Work done by the Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at Hong Kong University, published today in the journal Current Biology, shows that developmental dyslexia in Chinese-speaking children may be a more complicated and harder to treat condition than its English counterpart.

Control trials of Chinese children with dyslexia show that the majority have difficulties in both the visual processing required to interpret the images of Chinese script, as well as in the process of relating sounds to words, known as phonology.

For those from alphabetic language backgrounds, such as English, dyslexia is predominantly a phonological disorder.

One of the authors of the paper, psycholinguist Dr Li-Hai Tan says the findings suggest there may be a more fundamental mechanism behind the cause of dyslexia than previously thought.
Brain mapping

Earlier research by the same group showed that different parts of the brain are affected in Chinese speakers with dyslexia as compared to those who speak English.

"Different sites of the brain are responsible for the phonological dysfunction: the left middle frontal gyrus for the phonological problem of Chinese dyslexia and the left temporoparietal regions for the phonological problem of English dyslexia," says Tan.

Because written Chinese is an intricate map of symbols requiring rote learning of pronunciation, the researchers were then prompted to study how Chinese-speaking children with dyslexia were able to process such images.

This was done by measuring how 12 children with dyslexia were able to judge the physical size of different block images on a screen, and where in the brain these judgements were made. The results were compared with 12 children who did not suffer from dyslexia.

The results indicated that 10 out of the 12 dyslexic children, who had previously shown difficulty in processing sounds, also had difficulty processing images. It is extremely rare for English-speaking children with dyslexia to have both disorders.

The most immediate implication of the finding is likely to be a shift in the way Chinese-speaking dyslexic children are treated.

As the visual and speech problems appear to be equally severe in many Chinese-speaking children with dyslexia, Tan says that treatment may be more effective if both disorders are treated.

"Given that Chinese children with dyslexia exhibit multiple problems, the treatment of Chinese reading impairments should include several strategies relating both to phonological and visual dysfunction," says Tan.

For most English-speaking children with dyslexia, relating sounds to letters is the major hurdle so treatment is unlikely to change.

However Tan points out that as the previous research has shown that different areas of the brain are responsible for reading in Chinese and English, English-speaking children with dyslexia may actually find it easier to read in Chinese.
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2009/10/13/2712391.htm

Raymond

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"Nothing matters absolutely;
the truth is it only matters relatively"

posted October 13, 2009 08:34 PM         

What this is saying to me is that written Chinese and written English are two different methods of writing requiring different decoding systems.

Chinese writing (I'll call it kanji') is an intricate system of strokes that form images. I imagine it to be almost a system of actually 'drawing' the word it represents.

As we are familiar, our alphabet is (generally) a system of sounds. Most people find it easy to interpret words using a combination of 26 letters and applying the sound they represent.

However, there are over 15,000 symbols in Chinese kanji. People know an average of about 4000-5000 symbols. Now, 15,000 is a lot to remember!!

There are parts to a kanji that have a common shape that appears in different complex symbols to represent that object in various situations. So, the picture appears with other pictures to tell the story.

English is more phonologically based with only 26 symbols to work with.

What this article is telling me is that
to learn Chinese you need...

*** to have an amazing memory
*** be able to decode shapes of symbols/pictures
*** apply a phonologically process that fits with Chinese text
*** apply the level/tone/pitches of sounds that accompany one kanji that can represent different objects
*** running symbols together to create a text that holds meaning

Each one of those skills requires the use of different parts of our brain.

In English, we need to....

*** link letters together to make sounds
*** link words together to create a meaning

Even though, there may be different sets of letters to form homophonic words, eg, 'witch' and 'which', there is still a rule that can be easily applied to run the letters together to make a sound.

This can work for words like 'dough'and 'cough'. We know we only have limited choices. It's either an 'oh' sound or an 'óff' sound.

I'm not surprised that children with literacy challenges struggle with Chinese, given all the decoding and deconstruction they must do in an attempt to decipher text.

The article is about Reading. Imagine how difficult the next step would be - Writing!!!

There is a different set of neuro and fine motor skills that take place with Writing!!

posted October 13, 2009 09:56 PM         

you have know what the letters,words look like, to be able to recognize them

you have to memorize the letters,words

all that involves sequence and direction. Dyslexics have problems with those things.

some dyslexics do have a visual processing problem. for some, it can be an eye tracking issue, visual memory issue, scotopic sensitivity/irlen syndrome,letters/words seem to move,and/or the letters are scrambled

there is also the auditory memory issue as well as auditory reversals,scrambling too

It gets even more complicated

some blind people have braille dyslexia. Some blind people have problems learning to read and experience reversals when they read. They get left and right mixed up too.

so Dyslexia is very complicated. There is more than one cause, and so not all Dyslexics are alike. Therefore, a therapy that helps one Dyslexic will not necessarily help another.

I think of Dyslexia as more of a syndrome.

Raymond

------------------
"Nothing matters absolutely;
the truth is it only matters relatively"